CULTURE - Feelings of reality at the beginning of the 21st Century

A majestic view like a thunderstruck: Before our eyes, very deep down below, the glittering of the Lake of Lucerne, towards the north the hills and lakes of the Zurich-area losing themselves into the misty wideness of Germany, plat land without end… westwards the mountain-row of the Jura - and far beyond you can guess Paris, London, New York, San Francisco… down to the south, Central Swiss Alps with famous Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, further south the peak of the Matterhorn, we can literally feel Piedmont, Toscana, Sicily and then Africa with its unknown and indefinite space, a drama of human poverty, artificially created by men and their systems… in the East, uncountable
mountain-lines, losing themselves towards Austria, breaking through to the Balkans, then the lost land of Russia and China - all to be guessed when overlooking an area of huge rocks; you could imagine a giant having thrown great number of stones over the land.

The whole scenery looks like a gigantic aquarium; lights and shadows
change from seconds to moment, any green colours look out of misty air,
surrounding my view-spot, lost in the midst of Central Europe. Deep blue
the horizontal line of our mother Earth against the distant horizon. A
scenery missing any sense for reality. Since half an hour, time goes by
- printing memories. I am feeling like losing myself in eternity of
time, in a space of an endlessness, never to be overlooked. Humans come
and go: Born out of the belly of uncountable mothers, the males or
females will have their indefinite number of days in life, perhaps 3000
or 15687 or 32899 days, who knows? God? Who is it, what does it decide?
Why should He-she-it be responsible for my days of a lifetime?

Companion Rita is some distance away, also looking silently in that
unreal scenery and cultivating her own kind of thoughts. She knows: when
that guy gets lost in his philosophical dreams, its better to do the
same and be ready sharing the experience with him, once the dream is
over. The dog Leon lies in the grass, on the edge of a rock falling
towards hell any moment; he is living in his own nature, in times of an
unknown past, with a rough feeling for a future to come, of which human
beings seem to have lost any instinct to what’s coming upon us with
force. Like all animals, he possesses a sort of feeling for reality
which goes far beyond any reasonability of Homo sapiens. The last
species in our world have replaced senses for reality by dull capital
systems, according to theories of Keynes or Friedman. And in our free
time, natural life is replaced by human “culture” of ever lessening
value.

All this to say that culture is much more complex than “normal” folks
would believe:

Friedrich Dürrenmatt has written some plays: “The physicians” and “The
visit of the old Lady” for example. But theatre is only theatre - and
this will be so until we reach the end of our days. What will be left of
that famous Swiss writer will be the so-called “Stoffe”: The books with
titles “Labyrinth” and “Turmbau”. Max Frisch, another famous Swiss:
Apart from “Tagebuch I and II” mankind will not remember that oeuvre in
a hundred years, this intellectual effort will not last long. It is the
same thing with some other “geniuses” like Pipilotti Rist or other
performers and dull “Fräulein-Wonders”, coming out of funny times when
TV- and odd internet-”artistic” was uselessly confused with high-spirit
of real art in the past. Peculiar too, the famous wrapers and couple
Christo, bigot people with totally artificial fantasies; I have myself
some splendid ideas for political idiots to be disguised in order to
hide our awful reality… just put any sort of stuff around a building,
over bridges and around trees or some Arab female brains (even with
their consent!) - and you will be in history-books of culture for all
eternity…

Same goes for most of the writers and thinkers in this world. Once
looking backwards from the year 2100 or even 2500, we will have all
sorts of reasoning and feelings. But looking forward from this crazy
technical reality in the year 2000, we may have a presentiment that
those people will have much more relevant problems than today’s
literature wishes make us believe - with the aim to let us forget about
a terrifying reality.

In fact, what have all our great intellectuals done in the past? Take
for example Shakespeare, a monument of spirit that we worship like a
God: Human weaknesses, hatred, murder, killing, envy, jealousy and love,
impossible love for the most time. But reality? Sense of being on Earth?
Rules and sense for nature and for long-term rules for existence,
nature, Earth and the Universe as a whole? Where are they? Where are
these fundamental rules with Kafka, who has written “The process” and
“The castle”, showing in a peculiar way, what Freud meant to teach us,
psychologating other people in a strange desire to influence unknown
matters like souls, spirit, mind, under- and over-Ich and all the rest
of archaic behaviourism. This remark goes for almost all writers and
philosophers in past history: As always: Homo sapiens, he is the one and
only topic for all writers, neglecting deeper reality which has created
his own evolution and still is surrounding us. This is actually the
theme that we apparently wish to get lost free of will, in an endless
space surrounding us for all eternity. In fact, about 99 percent of
authors ever existing preferred writing on human feelings rather than on
the rules of existence that represent the fundamental basis of living on
Earth.

What about painting? Perhaps this will bring us a step further on the
long way to truth. Humans did not possess cameras for almost all times
of our existence. In fact, it was only yesterday when all these modern
technological things popped-up: Planes, cars, highways, airports,
trains, television, radio, computer and some other scrap, destructing
our senses and leaving us in a world where about ten generations alone
will have used up all energy stuffs, all raw materials, all breathable
air and drinkable water, all space that could be overlooked from a
mountain-peak in the midst of Switzerland…. but let’s talk about
painters. They were, apart some books printed during the last 600 years,
about all that could make us understand where we come from, what our
past was and how it looked like. This is the merit of pictures in
museums and in villas of rich people. But still, van Gogh was the
poorest guy ever. As always, when a genius is born, the ones who lived
at his time will never ever have had an idea of the splendid reality
that streams out from those unique men or women.

Same goes for the greatest achievement, humans still profit from their
past: Music! Look at the source: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Händel,
Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Berlioz, Saint-Saens, Grieg,
Smetana, Brahms, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Tchaikowsky, Schostakowitch, Elgar,
Rodrigo and dozens of other geniuses in music. Did any person grasp
during their life-time that they were more important than any king,
general, chiefs of state, rich simple and all the human scrap, so called
scientists of empty thoughts who prepared the downfall of our species?
It’s the wrong ones that “normal” people and the “intelligentsia”
worship in all times, as if THEY would be the real gods on Earth. Never
ever were humans able to see when a miracle widens human’s reality just
in front of their blinded eyes and senses - never ever…

This is it what we are used to call “human culture”: Not knowing when it
happens, ignoring the level of reasoning of art - of the roughly
thousand people that alone changed our world. Without them, we would
just be nothing and nowhere. But we never were able to show our
gratitude during there real life-time, never. Only afterwards, far too
late, we cannot do enough spreading our feathers, the copists and
profiteurs of an after-time take their benefits, whereas we enriched us
on the values, for which these men and women haven’t ever seen a dime.
Only distrust, bad words and an awful life, that’s about all “normal”
beings are ready to give to the few enlightened being high above the
average…

Human mankind around the year 2000 has exactly the intellectual world it
deserves: Hollywood-like manners in living, copied from the Murdoch,
Springer, Berlusconi boulevard that make shrink our mind more from day
to day. Unimportant politicians are shouting their short-sighted
craziness in the wind over all media and we have lost any sense for
reality and true life, we are willing to grant our future generations.

Listen to the original sound of a Pope of literature, hearing on the
name of Marcel Reich-Ranicki and referred to as “MRR”. I don’t know if
other countries have also some popes of culture - but for the German
language this guy is just the compass for all writers. He can make or
destroy any author. Now, hear the sound of MRR who is in fact a splendid
example for the rest of today’s feuilletonists in all media of cultural
world: “If I must read a book that does not entertain me, I throw it in
the next basket. It is a crime to annoy people with intellectual stuff
of no interest. I do not want writers teaching me real aspects of life.
All I want is entertainment and lust. Yes, yes, yes, Ladies and
Gentlemen, erotics and sex is what life is. Look at this book here:
There is a chapter illustrating how our hero stands behind a tree in a
park and studies a scenery where an elderly rich lady is leaked by an
beautiful youngster with all lust of the world. One does not grasp if
all is just a dream, a fantasy of the writer or reality. This writing is
so astonishingly real-unreal that I must recommend the purchase of that
work to anyone in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The author is not a
bore, he does not want to explain real world or our existence as it is.
No, he offers us pure literal entertainment. Best book ever…”

You see now: Everything has become a theatre, even all our literature,
be it originating from Shakespeare, Ibsen, Kafka, Dürrenmatt, Ionescu,
Miller, Beckett, Orwell or Huxley. Nothing is real anymore… everything
has, during the last decenniums, become more and more artificial - and
the future of our children can be drowned in the emptiness of an
undefined existence. We are governed by a feeling of greed for capital
and money and it won’t make us one jota more happy or intelligent - on
the contrary: The more we possess the less is left for those who come
after us.

But we had “great times”. Power makes stupid. It is so for the powerful
men in politics and it is so for human culture at the beginning of the
21st Century: We have the culture we deserve, based on our power and our
stupidities, exactly along the lines I have written in my books such as
“Power x Stupidity = Self destruction”, “CHAOS” or “20 maxims for
continuation of life”. When my editor sells those first edition for a
prize of Euro 1000 a book, not less and not more - for the time being,
we know the reason now… It is as it is. Humans will never ever be clever
enough to see when it happens and what happens. We are all falling down
the drain right now - in all respects: Ecology, economy, politics,
military power, cheapness of thoughts, reasoning of present dull
“philosophers” around the year 2000, encircled by an overwhelming
stupidity of politicians like Bush, Putin, Blair, Chirac, Merkel,
Berlusconi, Koizumi and the Chinese copier of a shiny neo-liberal
happiness… you can see them tumble, soon.

Forget any decent future for our children and their children. They won’t
have one. Not feasible without good air, clean water, enough energy
stuff and raw material - and a nature that would still stand for a
reality of worth, deserving to remain alive in it, for a while.

You had your chances for a relative paradise… it will never come true -
never ever…. Should this be the heritage of thousands of years of human
culture?

René Delavy

Author of “CHAOS”, “Macht x Dummheit = Selbstzerstörung”, “10 Maximen
zur Weiterexistenz” - BLOG - www.rene-delavy.com