An incredible number of people I count among my friends and close acquaintances have a feeling of existential angst. They always walk a fine line between hope and despair, belief in their own abilities and loss of self-esteem, as they are denied appreciation from the outside in the form of a professional task that matches their abilities and needs. <\/p>\n
It is always above all those who I love and appreciate as particularly valuable people, because they have IDENTITY. They are characterized by having perceptions, thoughts, ideas, (behavioral) concepts, principles and feelings that go beyond the expected and prescribed ones. An order that is based on practiced or prescribed templates will only (have to) be prepared to integrate independent acting elements in extremely rare exceptions, when there is always a sufficiently large potential of those who agree, panting and willing to do (voluntarily…) exactly what is expected in the requirement profile (which does not even have to be explicitly stated…). (Apropos “20 years of peaceful revolution”: didn’t the GDR fail primarily because of this problem ???) <\/p>\n
And then I go “out” and look at the world of the “successful”, i.e. those who are officially endowed with work and decorated with public recognition. Where those who consider themselves “influential” meet according to their caste and account and (have to) think they are all so great together that they make you want to vomit and at the same time you just have to laugh at this mixture of vanity, uniformity, conformity, self-satisfaction, overconfidence and stupidity, knowing full well that it could never and cannot be the goal to swim in this gravy train. <\/p>\n
I don’t want to sound smart-alecky or arrogant and would like to point out that I am putting my own honest point of view on record here: as long as you base your own existence, your own identity, your self-worth on the value standards of the external socially established and accepted value systems, a self-determined and at the same time satisfied life will not be possible, as you will always be dependent on externally determined conditions and criteria with which you cannot identify (if you are who you want to be).<\/p>\n
The project of becoming yourself is something completely different from playing a staged “being authentic” (according to a predetermined script)!<\/p>\n
I have long since said goodbye to the idea of finding a place within the system (which, seen in the light of day, only wants to be a “market”) in which I can realize my wishes and abilities unfiltered, unbent and unclouded. Everywhere, “compromises” would have to be made, “guidelines” adhered to, “rules of the game, even if they are not nice” accepted, desires, expectations, “influential opinions”, “latest findings”, “statistical surveys” and “immovable facts” taken into account, “loyalties” and “legitimate interests” observed, etc. Before I would have been broken by the fact that the existing system (as it is) does not suit me (as I am), I preferred to take the risk of being broken by not finding a viable path outside the (unsatisfactory but at least known<\/u>!). <\/p>\n
This is associated with major losses in those categories that we have all absorbed with our mother’s milk as the “cornerstones of a happy and successful existence”: Loss of general public recognition, loss of a “secure” income, loss of being able to move in the “known circles” – which gave social security & identification – in a natural-compliant way. In short: the commonly used social codes can no longer be effortlessly adhered to, understood, applied and implemented. <\/p>\n
It starts with voluntary social ostracism. It starts with a kind of cold turkey with all the brutal symptoms of withdrawal. <\/p>\n
However, as with all lasting changes, at some point you have to get used to the withdrawal. Perhaps the most critical point is reached when there is no going back to the familiar and, at the same time, no viable perspective for the positive new. However, from experience to experience, the unbent, perhaps split-off, but still intact SELF becomes stronger, more powerful and more active. Every day it comes a little closer to the surface, becoming broader and more resistant to our own (but in reality externally determined) doubts and fears. New, previously unseen possibilities and alternatives to mainstream life are opening up. <\/p>\n
There is no guarantee. But there is certainly no guarantee if you desperately chase after the recipes repeated like a prayer wheel by the so-called “advisors and experts” (who, strangely enough, have all dried their sheep in the socially approved dry) for the three thousandth time and yet all that remains is the aftertaste, which becomes more frustrating from time to time, of having humiliated yourself even further and not even having reached the desired goal… <\/p>\n
This is not a self-congratulatory call to “fuck the wall” or to “look how great we are”. It is rather an appeal to the undisguised self not to let it get you down. Quite the opposite: an appeal to the irrepressible power of the undisguised “I”, to one’s own self-efficacy. <\/p>\n
To believe in oneself, to not feel “useless”, “abandoned”, “incapable” because things don’t work the way they do for the “successful others” (whose only identity is their “status”, which is constantly hanging by a thread and woe, woe, woe, if it breaks…). And to feel more and more often the strengthening presence of people who are also looking for alternatives. <\/p>\n
The brain researcher Professor Gerald H\u00fcther ( http:\/\/www.gerald-huether.de ), whom I greatly admire, says the following:<\/p>\n
“The brain – connected to the entire body – is original and wonderfully made for growing with problems”.<\/p>\n
The “problem” of becoming a self-acting person is the most existential one I know. Let us see problems (as difficult as they may be) as an opportunity to arrive at new interpretations and possibilities in our own lives: <\/p>\n
A dreaming person is not a dreamer, an imaginative person is not a fantasist!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An incredible number of people I count among my friends and close acquaintances have a feeling of existential angst. They always walk a fine line between hope and despair, belief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[424,419,422],"class_list":["post-10000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experience","tag-capitalism","tag-politics","tag-zeitgeist-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harald-bluechel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}