Yggdrasil

Perhaps it is really owing to the Biblical Tree of Judgement that belief and knowledge are separated. Of course, you never can tell. But one thing is for sure: Philosophers' essential contribution to culture has been to reflect on the relation between the two. Anyway, since then people have been labouring over this opposite pair of terms. Apart from maybe tribal societies mankind falls into two groups: the one to claim the priority of belief and the one to favour knowledge. Both parties appeal to human reason, and it is a question of belief which is more convincing.
At the latest Enlightenment seemed to have decided for the believers in knowledge who all too often criticized belief in belief as superstitious. But just the way theologists endeavoured to back their belief with knowledge, philosphers realized in most cases they only believed to know something. This quite remarkably disappointed the belief in progress, and the last century gave naive optimism the rest.
But the dilemma of enlightened Enlightenment, post-modernism, -structuralism, deconstructivism is that a pitiless criticism of an only technical rationalism cannot go back behind the watermarks of Enlightenment. It is impossible to conceive that dead gods can be revived, that the Tree of Judgement can be felled. Mark you: Even fundamentalists use the WWW. Reason suggests that belief and knowledge are united on a level that is beyond reach. We have to belief in reason – we cannot know about it and we cannot belief in anything else either.
That quest for unity modern human beings undertake can only be held promising for the price of esoterics. And here there is another price taxing the material countervalue to transcendent illumination: The seminar fees and book prices the cosmic sages raise, whose success is due to the modern dilemma of enlightened Enlightenment, as has been explained above. After all, esoterics differs from rational science in its blunt claim to belief, but from religion in its try to give reason to its belief. Esoterics does not balk at scientific theorems or hypotheses; quite the contrary, it resolves them from their scientific background and recombinates it in its own cosmic context. And is just that manner which safes it from acquiring only a relatively small group of scatter-brains as customers who – owing to their transcendent way of life – have rarely developed a satisfactory attitude towards making money. No, the complementary group is recruited, too, namely those who want to know what to belief – the collateral damages of Enlightenment, the scepticists of modern age.
That is why there is something which is to replace the Tree of Judgement; to remain botanical, let us simply call it Yggdrasil – that cosmic ash-tree in Germanic mythology which is an explanation to everything – including and especially what is beyond human reason. Any seminar in esoterics, any book will fare well at following the Yggdrasil-principle; that is not just to dismiss modern science as a disastrous error, but to (to exhaust botanics) build of the exuberantly growing sprouts of the Tree of Judgement the Trojan Horse. Esoteric creativity will show in the kind of connections it can make; quickly archaeology and ufology can be linked, fantasy and psychology be exchanged. All that is needed is a two-valued symbol which appeals both to rational tradition and to mysticism. How? Well, diagrams, tables and curves are by no means tabooed; all one has to do is to point out they express a Higher Truth. This way metaphysics will be practiced with the aid of physics.
And reversely one will be well-advised to link speculations on the fateful or divine powers with scientific results. No member of the esoteric circle will ask if that works in the first place, for due to their membership the followers have deprived
themselves of their right to do so. This way mythology is not only established, but sold as well.
The one part of the customers poses scrutinizing questions until it believes; the other one does not want to know anything, in order to believe. But they have one thing in common: the strict separation from what esoterics as the hermetic inside world excludes: exoterics, the outside world. After all, exoterics neither comprises the ignorant nor the unbelievers but the non-initiates. Nowadays we can buy our entrance tickets on our own by paying for the access to the seminar rooms or the books.
Let us sum up the Yggdrasil-principle:
1. Turn away from the Tree of Judgement.
2. Turn towards Yggdrasil.
3. Place adverts in the newspapers.
4. Let the hyper-naive and the hyper-sceptic people in.
5. Call them the illuminate
6. Choose a symbol and give it a double content.
6.a. Give the naive something to believe and call it the original power.
6.b. Give the sceptic something to know and show diagrams.
7. Make sure the checks have sufficient security.

Xanthippe

Whatever we might think about Xanthippe - she is imperturbable all right. She categorizes human species in such a clear manner which is alien to our time which lacks principles. Her steadfastness - which the patriarchal-chauvinist discourse originally reserves to the exploiters and violent criminals - deserves admiration.
Of course, there are also negative sides to Xanthippe's character. For example, she has some difficulty in distinguishing a controversy from an unfair provocation. This is due to the fact she has not spent much thought about self-fulfilling prophecies yet. But it should go without saying a busy person like her has no time for that. All the time she is preoccupied screaming the eternal truth into the oppressors' stout hairy faces, morally erecting the desperate victims, here encouraging a university lady teacher to be in gender studies, there wishing good luck for a research project in Feminist Linguistics which has already proven that men and women talk differently; a minute ago she threw a new light on the issue refuge for battered women, assured a female parliament delegate of her journalistic assitance and put the statistic interdependence between being male and raping in a nutshell. Women after all have been silent for a too long time. Right now it is time to follow the direction that was taken 40 years ago more consequently. Whenever Xanthippe finally brings herself to put herself in the enemy's place with her emotional, typically female, artistic, intelligent traits of character, it makes sense to her it would be asking too much to expect that from men, too. And then it occurs to her that of course the nototious female passivity has encouraged male ignorance; how illusionary to expect the XY beings to have the intellectual capacity to change things themselves. Anyway, encouragedly she inquires into the quota of wordings discriminating against women.
Xanthippe's sharp view of things could make a manager grow pale; for he struggles to get rid of everything which might impede his decisions, to work hard for the so-called absorption of uncertainty with the aid of highly-paid consultants, whereas Xanthippe is naturally endowed with it. Boys and men as victims of male or sometimes female violence at best cross her mind as statistically deviant collerateral damages in th ebattle of the sexes. Who could want to blame women for passing on what has been done to them (which is by the way only meant to be an explanation, not an excuse)?
But it is not the enemies who cause her the biggest trouble; after all she expects nothing but primitive oppression and clumsy exercion of power from them. The worst of them even cite her indirectly, harrass their secretaries and grin later when drinking beer with their peers one has to take along as much as possible as long as Xanthippe has no say yet. No, the worst are the female deviationists from her own camp; e.g. the professional celebrities with a plunging necklace who exhaust the image of the clever female fool in commercials and chat shows and score points with a bawling mixed (!) audience. This is a serious setback for more than hundred years' history of Women's Liberation and, what is more, for Xanthippe herself.
In contrast, she has grown resistent to chauvinist offense. She has fought for legalizing the termination, so she knows best that humanity is no impossibility. The circumcision of young girls, still prevalent in other cultures, will stop, too, for there are the boys left. There is no way to outdo Xanthippe with reason; when men agree with her, they prove her infallability, when she becomes the target of dirty jokes, she may feel confirmed. Moreover, since Xanthippe has diligently never decided on the question whether sexual difference is biologically or culturally founded, she can freely stroll around between sex and gender, as soon as it serves the truth.
For that reason, her husband is wise enough not to express his own views in conversations too often, but to frequently inquire and to confess to know not to know anything. Still, it is too bad Xanthippe is not married to a mean macho. That constellation would do justice to both of them.
All in all it is a little difficult to like Xanthippe without reserve - perhaps because there will be always a remaining gap between true insight and right action. But until a female head of government is a natural phenomenon in any country, we shall probably have to put up with her - and that rightly so!

Windfall profits

In old films produced when it had not yet been trendy to be uniformly indivudual there was a character who seems to have died out by now: the crank, mostly dwelling in a village society, ridiculed, eccentric, at best jovially tolerated. But then, out of nowhere, some danger threatens the cozy rural company - be it a natural disaster, a band of gangsters, an alien reconnaissance patrol ready to conquer. Helplessness everywhere. The local elites fail one after the other. And then, when the plot reaches its climax, of all characters the crank begins to utter sharp directions, grabs the rein, only legitimated by the resignative insight he will not make things worse. As usual the crank turns out to be a genius disguised as a village idiot and gets rid of the problem of his own. Whether he will later obediently guide the elites out of their hideout or develop dictatorial ambitions remains an open question, for the film ends here.
This is of course mere fiction, but nonetheless there is a true core to it - a social system must live by its own ignorance. It must save a rest of unused competence to be eruptively set free as soon as the environment critically changes - qualification on the waiting list, as it were. Now, the point is that the system rather unconsciously cultivates this reservoir, for letting potential intentionally go to waste contradicts the organizational self-image. In other words: just by trickig itself an organization is capable of surviving crises. Necessity is the mother of invention, because it motivates creativity.
The Bible knows this principle, too; somewhere in the New Testament we are told about the stone the construction workers dismissed turning into a corner stone - quite a fitting image, for it implies organizational structures must know the difference between constance and rigidity. But we need not resort to exterrestrials or Bible words - the principle applies to everyday life, too. The elder people are avoided until the own children need low-price baby-sitting. And suddenly the death-bound methusalems over 40 actually can be useful.
Economics calls this cornerstone phenomenon windfall profits - unexpected chances virtually brought by the wind no strategy regardless how sophisticated it might be can take into account. Of course orgnaizations try to take chance into consideration, for instance with the aid of looking out departments; these departments are meant to generate the necessary sensitivity to environment as a kind of early warning system. However, this creates the problem of facing a paradoxy - namely generating a crisis by waiting for it to no effect at all for a long time. (It is the classical example of the risk insuracne.) At the age of small budgets the point of mere precaution investitions is less and less obvious. Opportunity costs become a luxury nobody will want to afford if that means one has to lower one's salary expectations. And after all does the inccalculable emerge not unexpectedly?
The general situation is that bad because all those who love to regard tehmselves as the elite have shut down their shutters and decided to lock out the windfall profits in order to lament the loss of profit inside. Not till the plight will have become big enough, innovativeness will be an evolutionary factor. Then the before exluded groups will gain access to the companies - not to the factory buildings, but where they in turn will lock themselves off later, as soon as they are saturated.
Recognizing windfall profuts in time is that difficult because the routine formula Since X, no Y suddenly turns into Just because X, necessarily Y. This is highly irritating, just as if black was white, the hero the coward, the fool the sage. In contrast, other cultures, be it the Ancient Rome, bei it Japan, windfall profits even have had their special day reserved - when the waelthy were to serve the slaves, when the employees are to give their employers a piece of their minds. And here? Well, we do have the carnival. But windfall profits require a conscious craziness - not a fuddled one the dawn will make forgotten.

Wail

It will be always difficult to give an attribute to an entire nation - last but not least because it has to be clarified what is meant by a nation in the first place. Do we associate a political and/or an ethnic and/or a cultural unit with it? Then there is the attribut as such; its regularity virtually cries for the exceptions to the rule, too. No doubt there are diligent Spaniards, honest Poles, abstinent Russians, humourless Englishmen, lavish Scots, dull Frenchmen or enlightened Italians. In the end a German will be ashamed to have not borne that in mind and thinks this is typically German.
Here we are at the core of the issue. It goes without saying the image a nation has of itself is especially hard to conceive, for it gives other nations the opportunity to simply adopt its critical implications or to scold it for its arrogance. In other words, the national self-image suffers from the same problems as is the case with organizations: As soon as the reflection upon corporate identity starts, one gets into a hell of a mess.
Since the gradual EU East-expansion it has become more and more obvious the classical German attributes like punctuality, diligence, discipline cannot serve as the defining characteristics anymore which are solely reserved to Germany. In more globalized terms: Germany has lost its cultural USP. Other characteristics such as obedience, planning, militarism have been inopportune for quite a while, too. So - what is the German self-conception like?
Of course it does not make much sense to arm oneself with notepad and pencil and comb house for house, street for street, to ask each German for his or her opinion - this could be handled neither logistically nor intellectually. Fortunately modern societies are independent of that, for - after all: what is the public for? So we are allowed to pose the question more precisely with a sigh of relief: What image does the German public have of itself?
Till the inclined amateur will have been set right, it seems to him the present characteristic of German society is its wailing. Unemployment, the reforms of Public Health and of the national pension scheme insitution, the decreasing birth-rate, the Euro - apparently any issue is appropriate to make the public sullen. And whoever dislikes that is not wailing about these issues, but about the others' wailing. Above all, there is common consent the general mood is appalling. But how can wailing be characterized?
In contrast to other verbal actions such as complaining or mourning wailing can especially easily dispense with a precise object. Usually we complain about physial or mental pain, maybe to somebody, but wailing seems to be much more self-satisfactory. Furthermore its durative implications are more obvious, that is it knows neither a definite starting- nor an ending-point, but can easily become permanent. So the object of wailing remains indefinite, which makes wailing highly flexible. Virtually any fact can trigger it off. The main thing is keeping it going. Wailing is, to borrrow an Aristotelian thought, an action of praxis, not of poiesis; it pursues no aim beyond it, it is done, pardon, for the joy of it.
This modest analysis already displays why wailing is that unprofitable: it paralyzes, since it has no ending after which things could get better. Wailing will only result in a truly deplorable situation if it kept long enough, because in that case improvement will have been fatally delayed, so that only negative things can turn out. And then wailing will justify itself. Withoudt a doubt every kind of society has its own problems - some of them are more difficult, some less, some latent, some exaggerated. But their global weight differs. Even th emost reactonary progressive will not be able to help accepting the pile-up of reforms seems to be less important in comparison with famines or genocides in other parts of the world. From that perspective we hardly have any right to wail. All the same, it is typically modern to shift future to present and so to speak make projections whose attractivity increases insofar as they make us expect negative consequences. According to that, any change is a threat. And this is the point of wailing: It can be only justfied in future times, and, since it does not recognize that, it actually will be justified then.

TV

Thanks to the annual TV discussion board media-friendly frequented by theorists and practicians our attention has been drawn once again towards the eternal conflict between information and entertainment. In fact, televison's self-criticism seems to be focussed upon these two terms. Once a year programme managers of the diverse stations show up, magically attracted by an inviting motto such as ‚Quo vadis, journalism' and discuss the quality of TV journalism. Even the impartial observer who has been spending large amounts of his lifetime in front of the telly has meanwhile found out that the roles are clearly distributed; on the one hand the public stations, matter-of-fact, quality-oriented, sincere, senile, on the other the private stations, colourful, infantile, representative of the fun generation.
As the debate is not meant to appear too auto-referential, attention is quickly drawn towards the Invisible Third, the audience. It focuses on the feedback, that is the effects of the effects on the audience on the programme stations. Preferably, empirical research is quoted drawing the line between public and commercial TV sometimes boldly, sometimes weakly - depending on who has ordered the research.
What makes the definition difficult is how information and entertainment are related. As is mostly the case, the categories depend on the observer who nonetheless somehow tries to ignore himself, thus creating the impression they are real. But the problems strike back: How entertaining may information be without being confused with entertainment? In turn, how much information can entertainment afford without taking sides with it?
So there is a variably sized district within which entertaining gets gradually informative, information entertaining. Apart from that the definition is per se difficult because the term information is ambiguous; beside the above mentioned meaning it can also denote any content. In that sense, anything is informative and it remains to be decided after that whether that information is informative or entertaining. (That is the ironical aspect of information; it is commonly used, because it is not very informative.) But before entering the nirvana of semantics, we seize a term which expresses this dim state of equality: It is called infotainment. A (by the way nearly successful) morphological contamination of information and entertainment. Originally brought up by the commercial stations in order to break through to the domain of public information, the public stations have widely lost their inhibitions and adopted the term. Sober knowledge has turned into a trendy one. And whoever was considered to be cynical because he held his audience for dumb enough to soften up the hard facts, has transformed into a sensitive programme maker who serves the sophisticated client. As the TV competitors observe each other how they are recognized by the audience, the standards of TV aesthetics have changed on both sides: more images and PowerPoint graphics, shorter sentences with dubious grammatical justification. Entertainment has shifted from SUBTRAHENDUM to SUMMANDUM of information. We might draw the conclusion that the distinction of information and entertainment still exists, but is disposable.
In short: Informative and entertaining formats each differ in information and entertainment. Another difference (the positive respectively the negative evaluation of the issue) then causes the continuous and endless self-representation typical of programme stations. Accordingly, the informative side of the information side counts as serious, whereas the entertaining side of the entertainment side is regarded as dubious. This is for sure, for the mingled forms information/entertainment or entertainment/information are all the more shady. At this stage, the common difference public/commercial is of no more avail.
Therefore, infotainment is a cipher of uncertainty if spectator A informs, spectator B enjoys himself. Or vice versa. We might assume the term remains open to speculation and will be further distinguished after high value and low value infotainment.
Horatio would be delighted to know his formula of prodesse et delectare still causes some headscratching - today and at the next annual TV meetings.

Transitions

What a theory of culture can learn from semiotics, in particular structuralist semantics is how meaning units, especially verbal ones, are organized. We understand words carry no meaning in themselves, but only denote something because there are other words which denote different concepts. The meaning of the word 'dog' is not conveyed when we look at a specific animal, but when we are aware there is a series of other designations of animals which entirely do not fall under the concept of a dog. So in the end the meaning of the word dog is it does not designate a cat, a solitary cell or a slug.
This principle has also been discovered by second order cybernetics talking about the re-entry of a form into a form. A form consists accordingly to that view of two sides - a marked one and an unmarked one. The marked space suggests to be all-comprising even though is merely leaves the unmarked, but implied space concealed. That is why we think a dog is a dog, because it is a dog, not because it is not a rhinoceros, a locust or a brimstone.
These trivial observations are nonetheless interesting, for they are rarely reflected upon. The 'logic of distinction' establishes no revolutionarily new perspective but informs us that we cannot observe how we observe when we observe - when observing we cannot observe observation. And this kind of managing semantic distinction becomes most interesting when we do not distinguish a single term but a pair of terms - mostly one which establishes an opposition. Assuming we observe the opposition 'beautiful - ugly'; in that case we do not only distinguish that opposition as a whole (beautiful - ugly as opposed to lazy - diligent, stupid - bright, e.g.), but also, what is even more interesting, the handling of a borderline within that pair of terms. And now the question arises as to how long can we attribute a thing to the one side, let us say the beautiful, until it will cross the line leading to the realm of ugliness? In other words: how are the semantic transitions organized? What about grey tones, presupposing we do not conceive black and white as totally detached ('manichaic') oppositions but assume there are transition steps, bilateral approximations to that line?
Empirical market research has primarily tackled this question and developed a demoscopic means with which to measure evaluations in a scalar way. A frame of notions is bent between two oppositions, each representing an extreme value. The specific single case is placed within that semantic continuum. This is called Semantic Differential and should be known to unsuspected pedestrians who have ever taken part in a poll. They are asked for an evaluation - be ist of a politician, of the general situation, of a political party, of the fruit quota of a yoghurt or what ever. To that means they will be presented with a scale whose two extreme points are occupied by values such as 'active' or 'do fully agree' on the one side, 'passive' or 'do not agree at all' on the other one. These values are linked with figures ranging, say, between 0 and 7. The indivudual answers to each question will be put in a series, thus generating a profile of opinion.
As can be clearly seen, it is the middle values which are the least spectacular, but the most crucial. After all: it is quite easy to find out if someone is a gifted football player, vocalist or head of a party or a total failure. However, what exactly makes the difference between three and four points? Where exactly is the separation line of the mean value? The answer to that question is backed by no reason at all - apart from volition. We might borrow Wittgenstein's saying that there is no line - we must draw it on our own. (This might be a modest indication to all those who think fuzzy logic is only revolutionary because they have never been concerned with a criticism of language.
The value attribution has of course some effects - not only upon the evaluation object, but also on the evaluator him- or herself. For one thing, our attention is often drawn to the relevance of the evaluation by being asked to evaluate at all. For another, the variety of opinions involves one's own estimation somehow competes with others'. And sometimes we can only cope with a difference of extimations by regarding the others as ignorant or feeling induced to distinguish the public from the published values. In that case one likes to belong to the silent majority’s talking minority What does some damage to the air of exact quantity to the entire business is the way the opposition pairs establishing the differential are selected. Does a politician count as undecided in the same way if the researcher chooses careless or deliberative as oppsition terms? And is it really sufficient to inform the public only about the form side of the representative poll values? The attribute will be communicated, but not the context, the scope within the estimation reveals itself. This way the evaluation with all its consequences resembles a photograph; maybe endowed with an exemplary depth of focus, the highest possible precision which only makes us aware a photograph is just a model, a cut from a panorama whose motive is exclusively due to the respective perspective of the person who takes the picture.
Conclusively, this text calmly awaits the 0 on the evaluation scale - providing 0 denotes quite stimulating, 7 entirely stupid.

Thomas theorem

Knowledge sets the society's pulse. Its tempo, especially its chronology is based on knowledge units being put into a period. Otherwise the antique, the Middle Ages and the modern times could not be clearly distinguished. So the complexity of the cultural, but particularly scientific achievements handed down founds the imaginary human CV. Lack of knowledge is irrelevant in this conception. At best it is regarded as a transformandum to be turned into its positive opposite as quickly as possible. So lack of knowledge threatens to break off the tempo. That is why it must be quickly redefined as merely interrupting the temporal structure - this is expensive enough.
As we do not possess universal objective knowledge anymore (and by now have quit even wanting to possess it, since we have gained some gradual insight into the problems the Creator has to tackle), we have invented a construction which helps us convert lack of knowledge into knowledge by all means: the belief that we know something. Now, at the moment of deciding, under time pressure, we need not care for what might later turn out to be an error. Only this makes organizing companies, offices, governments, clubs or families possible. Functionally speaking it makes no difference if we really know something or only suppose we do. The only thing that matters is that we bring about a decision conscious of knowing - regardless how deceptive that might be. That there is knowledge is a helpful fiction to motivate ourselves to go on - to avoid surrendering to all the impediments we can or cannot imagine. Which means: Stating facts creates them..
Exchangeability means the borders between knowledge and belief are bilaterally pervious. It is merley a useful fiction which feigns to us there is an osmotic relationship - only knowledge could influence belief. Actually the reverse option is possible, too. Belief creates knowledge; both brainworks diffuse.
Under the label Thomas theorem this aspect entered the history of social research. It says the consequences of a situation which is only regarded to be real will inevitably turn out to be real - even if the situation itself will prove to be irreal, its estimation to be wrong. This is according to the theorem's founder, William I. Thomas. By the way, it is only by accident that the NT scepticist Thomas could have found it, too - if people really believe water can be turned into wine, they will behave so - they will get the Holy Inquisition onto those who refuse to set alleged witches on fire.
What saves the theorem from being a mere footnote in the history of culture resp. science is that it is so practical. It is apparent every day (and not only in this text which contains ideas the author wrongly considers to be correct.) The theorem is so to speak the functional free ticket for rumours of any kind. For gossip cannot be checked either, which does not contain their spreading at all. Assuming we greet a new neighbour whose lack of sociability will soon cause the wildest speculations. Above all, he might have something to hide - for instance, when he after a short nod in the staircase quickly takes to his heels. (That he just might want to catch his bus will soon be crossed out from the list of posiible explanations.) Sooner or later the rumour can make its own choice, so to speak, if the neighbour makes a career in the drug dealing, slave trading or child abusing genre.
As we can see: It is exactly avoiding communication which founds rumours. One has something to talk about, and if someone does not submit to that need, one can speculate and make up topics. Communication needs information - regardlessly if they are true or not. The same construction applies to stock exchange - probably the biggest information trading centre. A little tip here, a (dis)approving clicking of the tongue there when it comes to estimating if enterprise data is exact, and speculation is off and running. The current price indicates rumour. The fact that every participant, including the interested public, knows that, makes no difference at all. For refutation of a rumour might be a rumour itself.
So rumours are indifferent to truth. At best we can try to grade them with reference to the artificial criterion of probability (providing we do not consider the use statistics has to be a rumour). Past rumours which have been recognized as such are called legends. Those which still claim to be valid are called prejudice. Rumours concerning the future are either called forecast (on condition they are more probable) or prophety (on condition they are less probable). Present rumours are either called gossip or propaganda (if we wish to reveal them) or information. Rumours concerning a person are called reputation, image - if we spread them about ourselves or acceptance - if they are spread about us-.
The success formula of rumours refers to their amazing flexibility; they are dependent on human disseminators, it is true, but this is it. Whatever a rumour recipient consciously or unconsciously makes up additionally can be absorbed and integrated into the rumour. It works along the same line as the Invisible Hand which doe not care at all what human beings will do, as long as they do something at all. Or do not. Therefore, misunderstandings when receiving and transporting rumours will not torpedo their effect. Quite the contrary, they are an integrated system fault to prevent the system from failing, endogenous antibodies which saves the rumour from uncomplicated refutation.
Rumours especially thrive within the political realm. This is due to the respective politicians falling victim to their own rumour they are all cunning strategists. That is why we always expect an ulterior motive behind any statement. Whoever tries to tackle a rumour will soon be regarded the craftiest strategist. And it is exactly that constellation which allows to combine entirely contradictory single rumours to extensive bundles, even conspiracy theories. Even the most heterogeneous components will not thwart that complex - on the contrary, they will back it. Just in that improbable concurrence the media paranoiac aka the public will discover a conclusive logic which actually is compulsive. Immunity to contradiction results from holding it to be a rumour the opposite side has insiduously, strategically disseminated.
Consipiracy theories are probably booming because the way they are organized is that up to date: a complex consisting of elements (in this case claims) loosely strung together, a rhizome, a network without central control, beginning and ending. A flabby something, extraordinary flexible, indestructible. What distinguishes them from mere fiction, though is their claim to be real. This claim serves to transform improbability into truth - suddenly we seem to justly assume what is unjustified.

Theory & Practice

People facing complexity either resort to a state of defiant boredom or desolation - the attitude of 'Makes no difference' or 'There is no use to it'. When we reflect upon why complexity is that frustrating, we will soon discover an insufficent concept manegement. For usually human beings follow the digital example and adjust their world view to strictly two-valued notions: rational - emotional, single - married, stupid - bright, successful - scholar. But in doing so, they do not differentiate the conncetion between these two concepts, but incidentally assume a contradictory relation - just like the black and white pattern. Either something will be A or B. And nothing else.
But as classical logic teaches us these two-sided relations create different kinds of oppositions. And the author cannot quit suspecting the frustrating thing about complexity is people wrongly assume there is only a contradictory relation. In other words: when people must realize the one preferred value is intricately connected with the rejected counterpart. Sustainability, for instance, from that point of view means we hope for time development which will reveal this connection. For that reason people sometimes spend money so that they can earn it.
That kind of complexity is indicated by paradox. If X and Y are oppositions and we wish to achieve X, then it will be absurd to aim at Y - at least this is what we think. But, as has been pointed out, there actually are instances we will exactly have to do that.
A similar oposition pair discussed ad nauseam concerns theory and practice. Here the boundaries run virtually institutionally, namely at the university and factory halls with each drawing the line between the theoretical and the practical world. Border crossers are roaringly invited now and then, ist is true, but they will scrape up to the end of days at the gates of the alien world. This is because in the end both sides are afraid the visitor from outside might seize the opportunity to speak and disturb the routine they have grown very fond of. If someone in the theoretical realm deos without certain words in certain situations, he or she will be exposed to contempt just the way if he or she does use them within the practical realm. Along the university and factory gates words shimmer between technical terms and double Dutch.
This difference is comfortable enough to arouse suspicion. Which is to say it is justified, but insufficiently backed. After all, it might be worth a minute of thinking if it is not so much the lack of practice, but the unsatisfactory theoretical orientation which makes the theorists think they can make nothing of practice. In turn, it might be rewarding, too, to think if the practical persons do not rather cherish an empirical, not a theoretical blind spot. For if we assume that Immanuel Kant, who has been recently been done the honour of being remembered, really was bright, then we ought to remember he settled the quarrel between theory and practice more than 200 years ago. In those days the theoretists called themselves rationalists, the practical persons empirists. As Kant pointed out, theory without practice is void, just as practice without theory is blind. Which means that theory will have failed to reflect suffiently upon practice if it can only be theoretically practical - while practice so far has deprived itself of the practical opportunity to incorporate theoretical knwoledge into action.
Thinking very practically (or acting very analytically) will help us to relaize how absurd that concept management really is - every theorists will always be a practical person and the other way round. This is because theory and practice form complementary terms controlling each other. We do something and see (Ancient Greek: theorein) what happens so that we can do something again so that we can see what happens so that we can do something and so on. Even the theorist in the flesh will know someone to deliver his food into his ivory tower, and even the most radical practical person has a certain notion of what he is doing - beyond the single case.
All in all, the trench quarrels between the self-styled theorists and practical persons know only one winner: mediocrity. In the long run it will jeopardy both sides - the theorists because one day they are bound to practically experience research budgets from the practice are missing, the practical persons because one day they will tehoretically understand why they are not competitive anymore.

Tertium comparationis

Imagine that we had 100 black and 100 white balls, 100 black cubes and 3 caskets. Further imagine that someone showed up and offered to establish some order. Genrously we beat a retreat and spent our time doing something more important. A little later our asistant informs us radiantly the utensils were stowed away in the caskets. Let us finally assume we took a look and recoiled. Against our expectations the first casket contains 99 white balls and 1 black one. In the second casket 99 black balls and 1 black cube sneer. Casket No. 3 of course holds the 99 black cubes and 1 white ball. The order, where is it, we might ask. It is simple, the assistant tells us with blank looks, in the first casket there are balls, in the second one black objects, in the third one geometrical solids. Anybody can see that.
Why is that procedure more irritating than simply filling the caskets in an indiscriminate way? Perhaps because dissolving the expected unities has initiated a goal-directed, in other words: not an accidental recombination. Irrespectively how artificial the procedure might seem - it is not arbitrary. It merely prefers a solution which is surprising to one that is conventional. It establishes an abstract connection between the casket contents which is nonetheless creative and well-founded. Leaving aside the problem if such a solution might be a little too sophisticated for the creators of these marvellous intelligence tests (so that it will not be rewarded with any point at all), the categories regulating the assignment are worth having a closer look at.
The point of any order is based on common things in a unit A as opposed to common things of a unit B. Elements turn into structural units by being attributed (at least) 1 common quality. The more obvious the things in common are, the more natural order appears to be. However, as our little example demonstrates, there is no natural order apart from the one who establishes it. E.g., organisms can be distinguished from unanimated elements; within the organisms human beings can be separated from animals, women from men, militant feminists from house crickets, machos from softies etc. Any identification which precedes establishing categories is based on comparing (at least) two independent units which nonetheless share from a certain point of view a quality, an attribution. Both A and B have c. The Latin expression is tertium comparationis - the third of a comparison. However, since classical logic does not like to count beyond three (tertium non datur), often identifying is identified with comparing. But this is not precise enough, for the two elements are only exchangable within the preselected scope of comparison. A and B are only identical with reference to c; apart from that they can differ like fire and water (which are identical concerning their being elements). As a consequence, not only identifying, but also distinguishing relies on a comparison under a certain aspect. The other way round, one can neglect c and concentrate on d as the standard of comparison, which might only A, but not B possess, which might justify allocating A and B to different units.
In other words: Comparisons are ambivalent. With reference to them two elements can either be attributed to the same category or to two different frameworks. Usually we do both at the same time, but we restrict ourselves either to the separating or the identifying aspects. This goes for things which are seemingly impossible to compare, for even this requires comparing.
Now this might sound like semantic hairsplitting, but sometimes has serious consequences in public discourse. Especially in Germany there is an almost annual ritual of blaming somebody for blaming somebody to be like a Third Reich person. Take for instance the former German Minister of Justice, who was accused of having identified the present President of God's Own Country with the Führer two years ago. The public turmoil was considerable and cost her her position. Under the media conditions the resignment was entirely justified, for nobody takes pains over quoting controversial statements in full wording anymore, but is content with elliptical condensation forms such as Minister: President is Führer. Luckily enough, all that took place while the German parliament election campaign was reaching its peak, so that venom could foam richly. But nonetheless: comparing is not identifying. A comparison just might entail an identification. Most prominent Nazis were like the author endowed with two fully working feet. From that perspective it would be correct to put him and them into the same category; from many other ones it would not,
Are we to conclude the entire scandal was only a malicious misunderstanding of a certain kind of politically biased media? Not entirely, for mostly we expect the standard of comparison to be in away relevant, informative. And it is that person making a comparison who is responsible for its relevance - even if it is impossible, because somone might recognize a kind of relevance which might not have been intended. In this case it has just been presupposed the relevant standard of comparison was the same kind of worthlessness.
A similar thing goes for the term offender nation; since we can suppose it will be far more informative to find a wholly peaceful nation we are bound to wonder why Germans and Jews? Israelis? are compared by that standard. Even if he emphasizes he does not intend to identify them. And therefore it is totally legitimate to compare him by that standard with a cowardly revisionist - after all he is not automatically identified with such a person. Providing differences remain to be found. But this is a question of willpower. After all, we cannot boast of tackling a hot issue and consequently lament we are being accused of having broken a taboo.

Target group

With visions it is quite a matter apart; quite a few people were seized by them and got celebrated for creating a new reality. Others were not able to draw a clear line between them and illusionary hallucinations and had to pay for it. Sometimes the transitions are fluent - from the Super Man to someone who embraces a carriage horse. But nowadays the matters are clear: Having a vision means having to see a doctor. We are too rational for that, are we not? We prefer relying on reasoned goals which do not remain in the sphere of metaphysical vagueness but pay tribute to cold calculation.
Apart from their psychiatric harmlessness, goals have the advantage over visions that they can be inserted into a chain of action. No sooner have they dissolved, they can be reinterperted as a means for a further goal. They can be recombined. As opposed to visions they give practice a structure. Visions in contrast make the invisible process. But however manifest goals may be; perfidity can be relied on; for goals require concentration, and they are relative. Goal conflicts can occur, and even the most ambitious plans might shrink into the hope to come out of it unscathed.
Let us take for instance the Marketing and the Public Relations Department of a company. Harmonious cooperation does not seem quite to be the phrase. The conflict of goals is caused by the fact that both departments will do two different jigsaw puzzles - except for one crucial element claimed by each department for itself: the target group, or, to be more precise, the divergent ideas that are associated with it.
From a marketing point of view, target groups are commercial persons to turn to, customers in short. As opposed to that, PR strategists identify target groups with the public. The difficulty is that the set of intersection is not considerable enough to reconcile marketing and PR. To put it oversubtly: Even in case one is neither acquiring customers nor winning the public opinion marketing and PR remain clearly detached, for their original Reason of Being is competing with each other. Maybe because they are tired of the constant quarreling over budgets and workrooms, senior executives like to talk about Integrated Corporate Communications and shake the marketing mix. Thus convinced of their intelligence they cooperatively lean back and allow the opponents to keep plotting and scheming against each other.
So we see target groups is a misleading term suggesting they are homogeneous social strata. But not only target group I, II, III etc. differ, but it is even unclear what makes a single target group. Of course we can formally resort to demography - but who would really dare consider the 24-49 year old people, men and women, unemployed and pensioners to be a united group? So we continue specifying and parcelling out new target part-groups, e.g. the female start up company founders with cellulitis and a latent desire for babies or the football fans who boldly drive a car while they are drunk. Social change (or its expectation) goes out of the way. Like political parties companies' chances to serve regulars are decreasing. New markets and voters must be developed, old ones are to be said goodbye to till they will be greeted lateron as the new ones. So the dynamics of goal-making adds up to the revolving door effect: Today's non-target groups must now be courted as tomorrow's target groups.
It is left to PR to do the impossible; for the target groups are as different and contradictory as the part-goals. They embody the fundamental difference between an information and a message, between what is said and what is meant, between intended addressee and collateral recipient. What is meant to please a special target group, just will not apply to the rest of the public; at best it will remain indifferent. Where growth is said, elsewhere pollution, social frigidity or scandal is understood. And at worst public attention is generated because one cannot do justice to everybody. Compassion will be missing. Therefore chief bankers' statements will cause only their their peers' ovations, but catcalls from the outside.
Corporate communications can tell a thing or two about it; it is about the shareholders and the stakeholders - the investors, brokers and speculators on the one side, the residents, the environmentalists, the trade unions on the other one. PR have reacted in a traditionally modern way, distributed the trouble and outsourced the Investor Relations. Now the boundary has been cemented. Who gives to whom when what information about what decision with what consequences with what intention? If no differences are made, the more important target groups will feel offended; if a difference is made, the other groups will feel alarmed, which can undermine credibility and jeopardize the existence of the company as well. In the end, everybody will dissatisfied.
Why target-groups are still stuck to? Well, for one thing the unknown must be given a name, and for another the creative aspects of finding target-groups can even be extended: We invent our own ones. Especially media programmes that are privately financed prove their TV viewers are modern YUPPIE layers disporting themselves at after work parties and making self-trivilization a way of life until they will be made redundant in their end thirties, too. These persons confuse being individual with being a member of that imaginary target-group. But it is in particular the political parties which pursue the target-groups most resolutely: As they are deemed to please everybody and to blame the smaller competitors for mere clientele policy, their public statements must reach that exact degree of semantic vagueness which just detaches twaddle from majority acceptability. As the political chat shows teach us, the scope is gradually shrinking.

Sustainability

As we all know, they are existent - these keywords putting the social state of the art in a nutshell; annoyance belongs to them as well as fear, risk and irrelevance. All in all, these terms are a bit unpleasant, which disqualifies them for the have some fun and pay-slogans. Above all, they express no perspective dimensionality, but simply lament the present state.
Quite different is the case with another keyword: sustainability. As far as the author is informed, it has not entered into common vocabulary till the last 12 years. What makes it that interesting is his pardoxical construction, the contradiction between word content and use. Without doubt, it is a fashionable term which objects fashion trends. Sustainability implies austerity, circumspection, foresight, a sense of responsibilty, in short everything which is missing all the time. Especially today.
It is similarly paradoxical it is just the political elite, led by our head of government, the media chancellor, uses this term as if it was a matter of course. Just like the top managers he compliantly practices self-contradiction in action, for on modern public conditions there is no sustainable use of the word sustainability.
Sustainability is endowed with a deontic component of meaning; the term expresses an obligation, and it is very telling it had its breakthrough at one of these effectless world climate conferences. And just because they have no effects, the deontic component constantly gains splendour. The admonishing index is growing and growing.
The original idea of sustainability is an economic one - if we naively presusppose keeping house is coping with a lack. So sustainable economy is in principle a pleonasm like the notorious female woman, little dwarf or corrupt politician. But the fact sustainability counts as relevant instead of redundant is obviously due to waste as an end in itself. Above all it is the environmental resources whose waste has been causing voluptuous scenarios of distribution wars, but there is information, patience, intelligence, too. Everybody knwos we cannot go on like that, foresees the bill subsequent generations will have to pay. Therefore the term is used once more. a real invocation formula which seems to be meant to exorcize the demons of future shortcomings.
The issue of sustainability, its lasting relevance for social discourse, is based on the foolish dealing with scarcity. As the spiral continues turning, everything is running shorter and shorter faster and faster. And here lies the real, typically modern reason, for while former societies knew the problem of short goods, too, nowadays time itself is a short good, too. Less time is due to making faster and faster decisions, for everybody is running the risk of being forestalled by someone - someone who did not produce new blood or who simply has better nerves. In other words: someone unscrupulous - a tough, rational manager. Someone who will be capable of selling charterflights to the Mars as soon as the Earth will have completely been exploited. Impressive, is it not?
Of course we shall have to pose the question whether there is something that can be done in a sustained way at all. It is not accidental in the least this idea has been transferred into eternity, metaphysical. There is an air of modesty behind it the present show-offish technocrats can only despise. Who can tell anyway whether the expectations will become real? And how sustained is sustained? Which means, how long is the expected period of time during which the intended sustainability is meant to last? Temporal complexity, the acceleration involves nowadays we can only conceive sustainability as a breather which interrupts the staccato-like managing mania. This is something we ought not to leave aside, for otherwise we will confuse sustainability with making only one (albeit the right one) decision so that we can live after that till the end of all days contently and unmolestedly. Since this apparently does not work (as has been said above, risk is another keyword), annoyance and disappointment will spread all the more. Better, we will not do anything. Then we can make no mistakes. And that means any. Till then we can continue talking about sustainability. Maybe we can take some consolation from the fact desasters produce the most sustained states we can imagine.

Survey

In the past, when things were better, decisions could be made carefreely. All that people required were two intellectual fixed points: the current state of the world and an intentionally altered one. The actual and the target output were quite easily exchangeable, provided there were certain personalities who independently and energetically defined the states and left the realization to the enthusiastic subordinates. Both historiography and the myth of founding worked that way. And this still applies to the delegation of power.
However, gradually interfering sounds bothered that harmonious decision-making process. That decisions could turn out to be wrong, had been known before, it is true, but just like in a Greek tragedy all that was left to be done was to shrug one's shoulders and state that the Great Statesman or the patriarch of the company were subjected like anybody else to fate. Failure served as the proof of overpowering autonomous forces at whose mercy the acting mankind invisibly was. So action and decision on the one hand, fate and Providence on the other, were detached. One acted and held one's breath, and when it worked the position in the chronicle or annals of political or company history was secured. When it failed, all that remained to be done was to confide in oblivion.
Some day, when being rational had stiffened into being rationalistic, the idea was given of depriving fate of its independence, too; the more immanent distinction of internal organization and external world replaced the traditional one of action and fate. Furthermore it occurred to actively influence the enigmatic environment instead of keeping the fingers crossed. The concept was simple and clever at the same time. How about not simply deciding something and waiting for the outside world to answer but taking the answer to the decision into account before the decision? Thus an offer could be made that could not be refused. The clock struck meaningfully and rang in the birth of modern public opinion research.
Nobody knows how often the decision-makers have had to experience frustration since then. But it is certain that making decisions is not that funny anymore; for at best the environment is merely reluctant and refuses to meet the brilliant plan which was made inside with keen approval; still, nowadays the pollsters peremptorily stand by, and surveys cannot that easily be dismissed anymore. People have grown too dependent on quotas, per cents and Semantic Differentials (active or lazy), on the reflection on the own appearance in the mirror of public opinion, so to speak.
What is even worse, public opinion polls rarely present definite results; pollsters pore over increasingly thick handbooks, pull out more and more sophisticated coding books, terrified of the vicious sisters called reliability and validity, but are compelled to develop a self-consciousness where it is least needed. The author is talking about the observer's paradoxe, which is a kind of blurredness relation in opinion topics. It teaches us that a question is solved in that way in which it has been posed in the first place. After all, we can never be sure whether we would give an answer without a question. This is no news for common sense, it is true, but who claimed public opinion research worked that way? In relation to that, we notice that the environment is constantly fickle and does not maintain any definite attitudes. Then there is the additional issue of the quality of quantity; maybe 78 % are in favour of a decision an organisation has made, still - is the total of those polled really in keeping with the total of the target groups relevant enough to thwart the plans? And, if so, can we be sure that the true opinion leaders are not entirely allocated to the remaining 22%
Whoever naively endeavours to slip the pollsters' results in his decision, will usually reap worse results the next time. This is because public opinion only perceives their fickleness feeding back to practical ogranization policy. There is no denying that terms like sustainability or farsightedness are booming because they interrupt the short-winded bombarding with polls, thus at least implying there is something beyond the trend which cannot be so easily counted. After all, we should not forget that there is a special kind of irony to that culture of rat race. As mad as we are about figures, as interested we are in numerical change, too; for constancy in numeraical terms means all too often stagnation. What is more, someone who believes something has been found out will suddenly feel compelled by perfectionism and promptly order the next, more detailed survey - provided an enthusiastic financial backer is at hand.
Politics and economy are in the pollsters' stranglehold. Why do they nonetheless stick to the continuation of fortune-telling by other means? Well, for one thing, because the pollsters would otherwise get into a crisis of legitimation. For another, because it works; for it makes no difference in organization proceedings, if their decisions are backed by truth, but it makes a considerable difference to make a decision at all. Therefore pie and bar charts serve as the icons of Enlightenment which has without further ado called belief information.

Soft Skills

Nowadays we have grown accustomed to reflect upon the world with the aid of computer metaphors. The author wants to make no exception and suggests describing organizations such as companies, political parties, offices, schools and other blessings of civilization that way, too. So let us assume they consist of two different components, namely the hardware and the software.
Let us further assume the hardware component comprises besides the common technical devices such as production capacities, information technologies the typically 'rational' aspects of organizations: administrative structures, rosters, contacts, organigrams, obligational hierarchies, functionaries. In contrast, the software component consists of executiing decision programmes, all in all what is old-fashionedly called human beings or person.
Providing that dealing with the worls in general, with other persons in particular, could be divided into the two domains hard facts and soft skills. Hard facts appeal to a fixed structure of states of affairs which are methodically strictly and rationally connected (the psychology of shape offers the term form); in contrast, the soft phenomena are more loosely linked. They constitute a kind of soft subsoil, th emedium, in which the form is embedded and with which it sharply contrasts. It serves as a background from which logic selects rules for fixed and factual connections. Apparently on this level logic is of no avail, since it can prove anything except its own presuppositions.
After all it is very comforting to use the hardware/software distinction. Especially software sounds somewhat more calculable than outmoded notions which still conjure up the Ghost in the Machine, but between you and me: in the end it is all about that. And here the soft skills play their part. As is widely known, in controversies we rarely fare well at recommeding our opponent like a schoolmaster to stay matter-of-fact. Often logic becomes a boomerang. And whoever is warned beforehand not to take a statement personally is bound to do the opposite. So soft skills refer to everything the hard facts aficionados shrink form just as the devil balks at the holy water: the paradoxe, the hint that order is always temorary and can be undermined every second. While hard facts fans love playing the part of the impartial transmitter of information, the soft skill party knows better, because not exactly. Hard facts use codes which only seem to be definite, whereas soft skills open the world logic has roughly closed. They depend on the single cases, not on the general abstract. Their textbook is either empty or comprises innumerable volumes.
The scientific manner which is booming since everybody wants to be a member of the knowledge society ought not entirely concentrate on hard research, but should also take cultural education into account. It should not do so jovially but remember that the nearly mystical gesture wich points at the limits of modern Science stems from quantum physicists. Second order cybernetics seems quite right in saying it is the soft skills which make the hardest demands - demands reliable logic fails to meet. And from that point of view it might not be that absurd to think that it is not the soft skills which make a cold world of facts warm, but that the hard facts are meant to let us forget about the principle of imponderability. In order to make sure nobody will get the idea to disturb the alarmed society which struggles to calm down social claims to education are transferred into privacy, universities are reinvented as technical schools; for it is much more laborious to conceive a many-valued logic which replaces the idea of only one level with the binary true-false distinction and to grow accustomed to the idea irrationally applied rationality is only an insidious kind of idiocy.
In turn of course soft skills experts gain some profit by that opposition, too; only within their domain it is possible to talk that freely and cluelessly and to unleash group vibrations in seminar rooms. That kind of subjectivity to which tribute is paid lacks any logic at all. In a relieved mood the facts can be tackled for the rest of the day. But just as hardware and software remain interdependent, a logic of subjectivity is required. After all we never can tell beforehand when to proceed solely intuitively or logically. At best we can logically prove intuition in retrospect.

Silence

Our culture's cradle is situated by comon assent in Hellas, that loose confederation which invented Occidental philosophy we are so fond of conjuring up in ceremonial adresses even though we cannot distinguish Ancient Greek letters from the Cyrillic alphabet. Maybe this is what makes it attractive. For philosophizing as the expression of non-technical Rationality devoid of time and accordingly money constraints has become quite unfashionable in Western countries, banished to the circles inhabited by melancholy unsalaried lecturers or in its trivial form by people who have just drunk their fifth beer. Today education means above all knwoledge which is applicable, exploitable, useful for the market - in short any information which is not an end in itself.
Only that person will be held competent who is the first to answer any undecidable question. We nearly imagine we hear the buzzer when it comes to discussing problems of integration, economical measures or balancing the welfare state. It is good form to send the employees to rhetoric seminars as a further training. Talk shows dominate the political discussion. We do a lot of talking.
In past times it was a little different. A philosopher is meant to think, and thinking was always easy to distinguish from speaking: Either temporally by conceptually preparing a stetement or factually by wisely abstaining from speaking. To present ears the ancient reproof a speaker has forfeited his philosopher's status might sound amazing: If you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher. If we take that statement seriously, we will inevitably draw the conclusion nowadays nobody wants to be a philosopher anymore and that is the way it is.
In public discourse it is only the word that counts, not the silence. Who begins to speak and then to be silent, will be regarded a loser. Who is silent in the first place, will live in the shadow. The latter might be all the more risky, as people easily suspect someone is saving his communicative efforts for strategic tricks and is up to something unpleasant. And as social systems are based on communication and due to their survival instinct experts so elegantly call autopoiesis cannot perish silently, in case a member refuses communication they make do with excluding the member, making that person redundant, or with communicating about instead of with such a person. If necessary, they will produce rumours which will keep them going. Often the both options are causally linked - someone is silent and gets suspected to be an eccentric, philosopher, sodomite (for all these attributes equally mark the opposite term to being normal), so that the talkative majority can expel him from the group. Any conviction can be excused - except that silence is valuable.
However, it can be. Sometimes it does make sense to stockpile rehearsed sound emissions. Contrary to the gabbily demanded communication culture there are still some places which insist on silence. A clear case in point: the working place, the hotbed of asymmetrical communication. Whenever a superior wants to bring his (her?) power to bear, he (she?) will order the employee to enter an open dicourse while insisting on his (her) right to speak. A subordinate who contradicts three times is anyhow about to change the job, a happy single person who need not be woried about paying the rent. Or take the communication forms characterizing the social system armed forces. If the instructor barks out a command, not even a reception signal, a communicative feedback will be appropriate: Stand still! OK, why not? Do not get worked up.
To the person keeping mum, silence serves as a consolating chance of making sure he or she is only inferior in terms of power, but not of intellect. Thoughts will be free, even if the body must stand to attention, bow or be kept on the leash. From that perspective any kind of repression quitely proves the superior's inferiority who is compelled to surrender to such a provocative passivity. Maybe this gives a less obvious reason why we still have to offer language courses to immigrants or why denseness is thriving. How can I be blamed for offending the ground rules if nobody taught me them?
No matter if silence is approppriate or tabooed - it is a genuine means of communication, equal to talking. Given the psychological conviction we cannot avoid communicating the lack of words means proceeding a conversation in its own way. There is telling silence, because the difference of speaking and silence which starts any system formation is repeated, copied, absorbed within the boundaries of that emerging inside. If I do not have anything to talk to a person, I must distinguish if I have nothing to talk to a person or not. To put it differently: It makes a big difference if someone disregards another person who is trying to open a dialogue (the German service problem) or someone prefers to keep his mouth shut when confronted with his superior's suggestion (who is looking around, eagerly waiting for objections he might use against the objector).
Qui tacet, consentiri videtur - the phenomenon of fellow travellers whose claim to be innocent makes them guilty is widely known in Germany. Which raises the ultimate question whether there is really too much public talk about socially relevant issues - or whether talking without consequences is only meant to legitimate silence. As can be seen, silence, too is subject to the (not so) New Confusion.

Scheme

Communication consultants' perspective suffers from an interesting blind spot - maybe because they run the constant risk of harbouring dubious cross professionals, one aspect of communication remains notoriously underexposed: to remain in the picture, its shady side. We can understand by that ethically dubious or even immoral actions. And it is all the more interesting, as the consulting clients, often enough induced by career motives, expect valuable hints right here: How to mob someone? How to manipulate a person? How to denigrate a competitor? Consultants often balk at these questions - officially. Inofficially these mean tricks do become an issue by organizing seminars meant to protect the participants against them (and implicitly giving insight into how meanness works).
And as taboos will be - they will arouse the highest interest. But should we really leave being insiduous to the naturally talented? Is it not high time to conceive communication solely to two or more parties being involved, not to whether what is communicated actually is morally all right? Beware - manipulation! Advocatus diaboli is fond of Rhetorical Questions. Therfore the reader ought to keep in the back of his/her head the author is acting very unethically - but revealingly.
Take for instance the scheme - a very captivating topic which has at best been reluctantly added to the textbooks of managing social contacts since the days of Machiavelli (who, by the way, was subjected to a similar mistrust). And this is although communication psychologists teach us a phantom which has become a topic is no longer a phantom at all. Schemes are quite ill reputed, probably because they are closely linked with lies, as can be seen from Shakespeare's plays as well as German tragedies of Enligthtenment. However, this is only partly true. Lies are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scheming - presupposing we are referring to the content of what someone is blamed for. But lies do play a part when they are meant to dissimulate the scheme. But let us proceed by turns. Advocatus seems to be carried away by the insight potential the topic involves. Sorry.
Schemes are quite a complex form of communication, because unlike the standard cases we have to take as basis there are not two participants (speaker 1 - speaker 2; he - she; writer - reader) but three, namely 1) the schemer, 2) the victim, 3) the audience. The schemer is the person to put the meanness into work, to plan and practice it. The victim is the person to sustain the plot; he or she is the schemer's target. The audience takes no part in planning the plot, still it indispensable for its success. That is, the audience is the force which, induced by the schemer, punishes the victim. As is not difficult to see, this is a very abstract model. And it has to be, unless we want to close our ears in the first place, motivated by ethical disgust, and scream 'My heart is pure'. So these three functional roles need not be identical with single real persons; without further ado we can imagine the roles are filled with groups of people. It depends on the situative constellation.
The determining factor is the displayed and the concealed intentions are strictly detached. The schemer has the concealed intention to denigrate the victim - for instance, because he or she wants to occupy his or her post within an organization and must get the competitor out of the way. This aim remains secret. The schemer constructs an offence which is serious enough to justify the audience's sanction. Construction can but need not mean lying. It plays no part for the production of a scheme if the reproach is based on facts or not. That at best will have its impact on the prospect the plot may have. The exact kind of offence is variable, too. But as it aims as doing damage to the vistim's reputation, it is meant to undermine his or her credibility. This means the reproach concerns either the character disposition or the competence the victim has. In the first case the schemer indicates to the audience the victim is a schemer (!), in the second the victim is incompetent. But this indication (or denigratiuon) is anything but concealed. Quite the contrary, it must be as open as possible, so that the audience, maybe a little slow, will understand the offence is really worth sanctioning. The next steps are open as well: the indignated measures the audience will take, the victim's desperate struggle for self-defense. In other words: The schemer can behave open as long as his or her motivation is not at issue. Information is free, but the ulterior motives are concealed.
And it is just that difference between what is factually said and what is implicitly meant which makes scheming a typical form of communication. Common language use levels out this difference between, as pragmalinguistics calls it, the locution, the utterance, and the illocution, the speech act, or, as the theory of social systems puts it, between the information and the message as far as possible - it has to, because talking would cease completely for the sake of speculation what might be meant. Nonetheless, the difference still remains.
Modern schemes characteristic of media democracies increasingly fall together with scandals which display a similar three-piece structure. After all, the very concept of audience implies the public component. However, the public of today is not a cultivated gathering of culturally inclined citizens who watch the actant present the victim from an aesthetic point of view, but it has to act as a judge and punish the victim, too. The public means are entirely about changing the victim's reputation. The victim will count less than before the scheme. The schemer triggers off a loss of credibility, of face. The victim cannot show him- or herself in public without seeing accusing fingers pointing in his or her direction - fingers whose possessors do not want to realize it is them who as the audience factually decide if the scheme will be successful, thus potential victims of their own.
After all, only on a more abstract level the functionality of schemes reveals itself entirely. They serve as a permanent medialization, a dissolution and recombination of seemingly constant forms of occupying social positions. To put it differently: By making someone bearing a function attackable they help detach the function from the bearer. No matter how the merry-go-round of personnel may turn, no matter how many specimens of circumstantial evidence are gathered for the day of reckoning - the post itself will not be doubted. It will be merely filled by another person. The more candidates compete with each other the more probably it will remain intact. And schemes actually serve to maintain the systemic difference between position and person by pretending to warn against their entanglement. So personal replacement seems to be the only way to import a minimum of dynamics into predominantly static organizations. The respective scheme victim will take only a small amount of consolation from it, but after all we have gotten accustomed to thinking big, have we not?
Needless to say, there are various techniques of scheming. The author likes to put forward the thesis schemes can as it were form a recurrent interlocked network. It works in accordance with the principle of level skipping. An office-holder who wishes to protect himself from a scheme conceived by his direct subordinate will be well-advised to induce the latter's immediate subordinates in turn to plot and scheme, thus converting the potential schemer into an actual victim. If he acts particularly skillfully, the executors will believe to be the schemers rather than the audience. Like any organization of a modest complexity the answer to the question of who is cheating who only refers to circular structures. And it is exactly that kind of structure which eases moral indignation. Basically all that remains is the question if someone has deserved to be a victim to a scheme.

Sadicissm

Humanist philosopher George Berkeley is widely unknown apart from his peer group. His notion of reality is too one-sidedly sensualistic. It seems to stem from the old days - before Kant's copernian turn could end the quarrel between the Rationalists and the Empiricists by assuming synthetic judgements a priori. However, Berkeley's motto esse est percipi hits the nail right on the swirling head of media images. Only what is perceived is considered true; nothing is invisible. As a consequence, a whole generation has grown up widely undisturbedly whose socialization mainly is based on conveying visual knowledge. What is written or even spoken is remakably second to what is graphic.
If you have nothing better to do, you may enjoy comparing university textbooks from the 1970s with recent ones. While letter columns pattered upon the groaning reader before, while the bold print or grey frames were considered to be the peak of progressive didactics, nowadays cartoon figures and charts are grinning at the viewer in a true lightning of colours. A kind of graphic stimulus satiation bears witness of how grim the competion for attention has become. The perception distance to the video optics is meant to be as narrow as possible. And only what can be seen is real. Permanent availabilty of photographs spreading via internet suggests to every user he or she takes part directly. From this point of view (!) the websites only radicalize the common construction of reality moving TV images convey.
It might be a telling sign of the present Marquis de Sade actually is in contrast to Berkeley widely known outside his peer group. Oppressing others in a mean way belongs to the basic social rules at the work place (à propos bullying) and practice makes perfect, does it not?
How much imagery has become the lingua franca of the global media society can be seen from the sadistic photographs published via WWW. Right here de Sade and Berkeley meet halfway. Regardless if babies are maltreated, dogleashes are tested on human beings crouching on the ground, one's peers are eaten or a fellow student is forced to bare himself - the camera is always there. While traditional sadists liked to resort with their victims in gothic vaults reminding of the motto of Dante's Inferno, perversion as an end in itself is not sufficient anymore. Instead it has to be made medially available; the nightmare is meant to leave the depths of the subconsciousness. The air of authenticity requires banishing it on film and giving the modern oh so normal WWW Peeping Toms the licence for mental masturbation. A remarkable leap in the evolution of homo homini lupus, for the culprit's perversion magnifies by including once excluded spectators, thus making them second degree accomplices, while the victims even lose their right to global silence. Humiliation alone is not enough anymore - the whole world has to know about it.
A very intersting anchronism, indeed, for atavist contempt of humanity has united with the state of the art of modern technology. The result is even more repulsive than the classical version. Within the global village de Sade has finally turned into a heinous figure and maybe it is not till now that Benjamin's view mass reproducabilty robs the work of art its aura has been confirmed. And the human dignity, too.
This highly developed bestiality whose testimony can be wateched in the internet has nonetheless its positive sides. After all, while in former times the whole prosecution apparatus struggled for concise evidence, today's culprits are more and more ready to catch themselves at maltreating others. Can it be merely accidental the culprits' next generation has been accustomed to daily talkshowsfrom a child watching miserable people make a monkey out of themselves in front of a giggling TV audience? As can be seen, we will be nothing if not noticed by others. So this truly narcisstic drive embraced more than ever as can be seen in WWW lives it up to the logical self-accusation.
Since the beginning of time the past has been using pictures for self-assurance: Look, how much fun we had then. And to make sure not to miss the slightest valuable moment we record everything. For reasons of selection. Perhaps it is just that which makes up for the sadists' narcisstic motivation. Maybe they cannot believe themselves they did something so reprehensible. For that reason the camera is running. Internet publication serves both purposes - the miserable souls' craving for admiration as well as the seemingly noncommittal image.

Rhetoric

There are countless ways of illustrating the national decay everybody is complaining (or simply wailing?) about. No matter if it is about the youth, the economy, politics, culture - the elegies are on the rise. Quite certainly not without reason. All the same, one, maybe the sufficient criterion has hardly been brought up. Even if he is wearing professional blinkers - the author has the language use in public in mind.
To avoid the risk of hasty rejection or enthusiastic approval: It is not about the increasing impact of (pseudo) Anglicisms on our pure, purer, purest German mother tongue. That kind of suspicious control should be left to the professionals, the amateur linguists who are desperately seeking entrance to the chat shows. Instead, this text is about the decreasing capability of composing well-formed German sentences that are in keeping with grammatical and orthographical demands. All we have to do is spend a day in front of the TV set to find out praised journalists apparently have never learnt how to handle their tools: words. If we have a look at the inserted news texts, we cannot escape the conclusion they were produced by dyslexic trainees. So it is speculated in Germany that the development will cost us intelligence, reluctant childs cannot be teached, dedectives in exonomics are needed, it is better as the latest year, it is one of the most extreme experiences or becoming increasingly harder, we are seemingly getting more and more stupid (although we are apparently doing so) and much more of that kind. There are so many issues on this notice of defects and they are still on the rise. It is only a matter of time till the most ignorant speakers will be rewarded with special awards for their outstanding gift for unpretentious languages. That is the way German elementary pupils are motivated. What about the British ones?
Anyway, these remarks are merely incidental. Let us turn to the epitome of the public culture of speaking, that kingly discipline which has enobled cultivated and mature democracy ever since, practically the soul of occidental philosophy of state: the parliamentary speech. Thanks to the archiving efforts of a programme wich is orthographically slightly firmer we get the opportunity to watch historical debates every Sunday afternoon and compare them to recent ones. Even though things were not wholly better in the past (which can be seen from the notoriously underexposed pictures from the 1970s), the cultural shockis painfully striking. No doubt, a lot of nonsense was uttered then, too; of course any controversy was presented as a manichaeic battle between chavinism and communism. Still, the speakers' inclinations to pointed statements matched their rhetorical skills. When the chancellor attacked the opposition leader, the latter could at least rely on a member of his fraction would be able to respond something appropriate. The confrontation was quite entertaining. Moreover, the rhetoric training seemed to comply anything but complacent evading precise comments which often hurt but hardly bluntly offended. So who did not realize then the politicians were competent has to apologize in the year 2004. After all, what was sober, original, self-confident, vivid, supportive of the State, determined, vernacular or committed in former times, now is dull, would be innovative, pompous, unimaginative, hectic, uninspired, nagging, demagogic or shrill. Remaining doubts can be dispelled by comparing the names of relevant politicians now and then.
Is this just another case of solding politicians? Not quite, for our representatives are eager to please the imaginary majority, after all. And the decline of parliamentary debates is of course due to the inflation of statements in 'political' talk shows which are not even meant to resemble a forum anymore. Or to the hectic waylaying journalists, competitively waiting to get a half-minute statement from a politician on his way to a committee meeting. Political speech in the narrow sense is discernibly (which makes the present form specific) no more a debate. It merely interrupts the steady decision-making process which takes place outside the plenum. And by now really all speakers know exactly where the camera has been installed into which they deliver a text they are reading for at best the second time.
When was the last time a relevant political speech impressed the public opinion by its rhetorical skill? Since the author has been allowed to vote, for 14 years, he has some difficulties in remembering one. The so-called "swing" speech a former Federal President held seven years ago was no rhetorical highlight in spite of media promotion. And that lack of skill cannot be excused by the speakers' concern they might induce the stupid people to lead a total war once again if they display rhetorical brilliance.
Unfortunately, the original unity of rhetorical demands, content and shape, seems to have split up anyhow. The parliament is predominated by the austere content, upright, predictable, official occasions in comparison by a more stylized, but vague address. However, if striving for eloquence simply counts as recreation from everyday practice, we can have no right to complain about our political culture.
Apparently we Germans are content with consoling ourselves by digging up the outdated image of the 'poets and thinkers' and outsourcing its realization. But there is hope: model experiments with E-Campaigning via WWW suggest we can give up rhetorical contortions in future and form our opinion in favour of an election platform by means of 20 simple questions. And perhaps there will be soon the virtual representative - endowed with an integrated oratorical function which allows the sophisticated user-voter to stipulate the number of metaphors, chiasms or even coprolalies per speech unit. After all we only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.

Reason

Modern age is dancing dizzily around two Golden Calves called money and reaon. Money is the ability to control the fellow beings' behaviour, reason is the capability of regulating notions beyond mere abstraction of perception, thus establishing principles. It is this kind of reason the continuous specialization, divison of tasks and functional differentiation modern societies consist of. And this is quite a remarkable procedure, for the guiding principle of reason actually suggests indivisibility. Principles are either valid or not; but they are not partly valid. So how come that the indivisible principle of Reason has generated so many different social domains with their own prcedures? The answer to that question will not least determine if a consent-based society seems possible at all.
The concept of Reason is entirely based on a two-sided form which defines a scope of decision. This two-sidedness is represented by the values true and false. Accordingly, a way of thinking will count as reasonable if its decision prefers the true value and consciously dismisses the false one. This does not only go for theory, but for practice, too; rational action is a right way of behaving which satisfies the truth criterion. So what is right will be what is true.
So much for the principle. The drab monotony of everyday life looks quite different. Whichever way we can look at it, trying to take every aspect into account, making a truth-oriented decision - a second person will show up, contradict, sometimes even vehemently and declares the thought to be unrasonable. This calls for a third person who is eager to point out his view which as expected says his previous speakers are wrong. And number four is already preparing himself. The truism that too many cooks spoil the broth is not restricted to the culinary field. Take, for instance, the reform of social security systems: Party X will suggest A, party Y will prefer B, C will be agreed upon. Party Z will brand technical shortcomings which inhibt C from turning into D. After all, party Z will side with trade association a and will prove the entire debate will only result in E. That is why it will suggest to discuss the issue rather principally with reference to aspect 1. Now social associations will seize the opportunity to deny aspect 1 energetically. Well, that is the way time passes.
Someone who takes none of these sides has two options; either one chooses the simple way and disputes the reason in each case. Or one suspects that reason as the higher principle of order can only generate several partial rationalities which are each on their own justified, but do not fit together in total. To put it differently: One has a feeling (sic!) that rationality alone is no gurantee for reason. So what might be a microeconomic blessing might be a macroeconomic jeopardy; or what might be necessary in terms of social peace might weaken the economy which in turn can also threaten the social peace. So reason is a reasonable construction, for everybody maintains to be endowed with it, until he notices he is not the only one claiming it. And now the real inquiry begins. So reason lies exclusively in the proceeding selection between the true/false alternative, but not in the decision itself. Thus, reason keeps things going but finds no end. The end can only be declared for the sake of governmental reason, allowing to lock everybody in who dares doubt if this is a reasonable procedure.
In short, modern societies do not suffer from a lack of reason; quitze the contrary, in forming different pressure groups with specific standards of reason they have succeeded in handling the problem of Reason rationally. But - it is far from being intelligent, for being intelligent means in contrast to being rational establishing a perspective within which an option between true and false can be formulated in the first place. But by membership of a political party, an association or whatever a given perspective has already been accepted. So dealing with the true-false distinction will be something ready-made, expectable, ritual. Everybody has heard about resonable arguments in favour of or against the reform of Public Health Service.
This is incidentally another reason for public annoyance. We sense the controversy is highly rational. And just for that reason we intelligently mistrust all the rational competitors.

Promise

That language use is sometimes misleading is no discovery the language analysis has made; we could experience it every day if we only wondered where we have arrived because we relied on words - combined words and single ones, too. The latter often collide with other ones if we think it over.
Public language use is replete with that semantic veil; usually they serve to turn a controversial or clearly negative matter into a positive one, to charge it positive, so to speak. As upvaluing its function is its term 'euphemism'. But since this is widely known, the critical achievement is not too sensational here. These euphemistic words are at best faded, 'dead', that is detected euphemisms. Everybody knows, after all, making redundant means firing, impression management means deception, élite means a dilettante with an effective directory. Whatever can be verbally expressed is dubious.
But there are less clear, more subtle instances. An especially precarious example is the expression of a verbal action politicians apply in an election campaign: the campaign promise. On condition we practice charity, we do not make do with tritely translating it into the term 'lie' but have a closer analytical look.
An election promise denotes (when we start from the intellectual bottom) making a promise in a campaign. Let us ask ourselves if it is really about a promise simply defined in an attributive way by the utterance conditions - or if the so-called promise is predicatively characterized to such an extent that we even cannot talk about a promise at all. That is, if case 1 is correct, an election promise will be a promise; if case 2 is right, then it will not. In that case the utterance conditions inhibit the action from coming into effect.
To clarify the issue we must have a clear conception of what a promise is. Or, speaking in a critical way: What do we mean by using the word 'promise'? Intuition alone implies the following four examples do not comprise four promises:
I'm going to spank you, I can promise.
Do not worry, the tempest won't damage this house, I promise.
But we will go to the cinema tonight, I promise.
But I promise you to quit smoking.
As we can see, simply labelling a speech action a promise will not suffice to actually make it such. Rather there are different utterance types; they might have things in common, but these aspects are not sufficient to make them identical. Wittgenstein called this phenomenon the family resemblances of language games. For instance, both a threat and a promise refer content-wise to the utterer's future action which might affect the interlocutor. In that respect they resemble each other - but the threat announces a negative, the promise a positive action. Consequently even childern can very reliably tell the one thing from the other. Furthermore, as for a future beneficial state, a promise is similar to (but not identical with!) a positive forecast or a prophecy - but the latter's contents are beyond the utterer's influence. It is impossible to promise one day we will exploit the environment on the Mars instead on the Earth - even if the NASA is covering up that crucial difference out of financial motives. As difficult it is to tell a forecast from a prophecy, as easy by comparison it is to distinguish them from the promise. The difference criterion lies whether an utterer's action is at stake. Moreover we can separate promise from commitment. Both refer to the utterer's future action, but in the latter case the action is irrelevant to the interlocutor. If my neighbour informs me he is going to take care of his health, this will not really interest me; but if he is in debt with me, I can quite understand his utterance to be a promise.
Thus steeled we can now turn to the election promise. What is it about? A candidate's announcing a future action for the voters' sake? If so, we can be correct in talking about a promise. However, a broken promise is a very serious breach of trust. This is because confidence as a 'risky advance' (Luhmann) can be withdrawn very easily. One single case of misuse is often sufficient to pigeonhole the promise breaker one and for all as a liar and avoid further contact. So will be candidates liars if they do not keep their promise? The opposition which has lost the election due to the promise will always say they are; it is to scrutinize the emptiness of the victor's promise. This does not only apply to the present chancellor, as his predecessors can testify; take for instance the 1970's 'pension lie', the 1990's 'flourishing East German regions'. Still at least in Germany it happens quite rarely a chancellor will be immediately voted out of office for breach of trust and false promises.
This is because a promise does not only require the utterer's sincerity, but also his situational competence to put it into practice. Exactly here lies the politican's loophole; his utterance is meant to exert the utmost dramatic effect, so it has to be correspondingly comprising. And a comprising announcement again implies high complexity. It goes beyond a single person's intellectual capacity (and that kind of person need not be a candidate, even though it might help). The more complex the entanglement, the more irritable its sensitive machinery will be. The system of announcement walks into its own trap, so to speak. The trap is called 'tight causal coupling'. E.g. we can establish an overall network of arrangements, organize the purchase of food, spirits, sign on babysitters, professional entertainers, reservation of restaurant rooms, CD players, CDs and many more - but a puncture, a coughing child in the kindergarten, a polite superior's direction, an operating system error - these events can jeopardize, if not thwart the promise to arrange a party. Of course, great politics has set higher standards: faults of global economy, mentality problems force the candidate to redefine the given promise as a simple announcement. To put it differently: Campaigns lack a communication aspect which will be handed in later: the conditional IF.
Given that, it is hard to talk about a 'real' campaign promise. A serious candidate could only claim he will not achieve X but he will (want to?) try to do so. But nobody would like to say or hear that. In contrast, a family-resembling justification is to replace the notoriously vague X with a far more modest x'. Instead of - pardon: as full employment one Euro jobs.
But beside this interior condition there is an exterior, too which characterizes campaign promises: the immediate temporal, even causal connection between the announcement and the expected return. For every promise implies a favour which can under the appropriate conditions demand its pay off in an unconstrained way. It does not matter if one is aiming at it when promising a favour. The return demand will latently exist. And in the case of campaign promises the pay off is implied from the start: voting in favour of the utterer.
Which draws our attention to another, maybe the crucial aspect; the negotiation situation in which the campaign promise is made. It works along the quid pro quo principle. Without vote no promise. For that reason, the campaign promise is not a promise in the first place (which means it is not identical), but an argument in favour of voting for a candidate. But arguments belong to a class of speech actions wholly different from promises - the more or less sound statements.
All in all the term campaign promise refers not to the identity, but to the family resemblance utterances of that kind have with promises.