Soaring
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: the mental asylum named Germany
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A laudatio I found worth to be red
You must not have heard of the award and you must not have heard of the journalist (he ehads the NZZ currently). But what the laudatio for him told the oisteners was somehtign that I found worth and satisfying to listen to, considering the background of our modern present and the loss of standards and reasonable scaling that it brings. The NZZ printed it:
Eric Gujer refuses to ride the waves of public perception and representation. His journalistic work distinguishes him as a free spirit. Laudatory speech by Leon de Winter on the occasion of the awarding of the Ludwig Börne Prize 2022 to Eric Gujer.
Dearly beloved,
the prize awarded today to Eric Gujer bears the name of the German journalist Carl Ludwig Börne. Börne was a troublemaker, a free spirit, and if he lived in our time, he would certainly fall victim to the cancel culture, just as he did back then - he would be systematically excluded from a social group that can confidently be called the "establishment." But what is that anyway, the establishment? It's people like us, honored attendees, who have gathered here. The beauty of the prize that bears Börne's name, however, is that in this day and age it can easily be awarded to free spirits - hence Eric Gujer.
Is he a free spirit? Anyone who sees it as his job to analyze the hysteria of the moment and the madness of everyday life is most certainly a free spirit. Mr. Gujer refuses to ride the waves of public perception and representation. As our sciences advance and penetrate ever deeper into the deepest structures of existence, both to the limits of the universe and to the smallest of the very smallest particles that make up all matter, we see hysteria spreading almost unchecked in our society. We can therefore confidently call the time in which we live the era of hysteria.
In the 19th century, hysteria was a term for extreme emotional behavior in women. The origin of the word lies with the ancient Greeks, who were not exactly known as feminists. "Hystera" is the Greek word for "womb." But the Greeks weren't the only ones who associated extreme emotions with the womb; the same was true of the ancient Egyptians and the Romans. Christianity, fortunately, later deviated from this, but exchanged the womb for Satan, which is basically, if you think about it, also a form of hysteria. Christians tried to suppress hysteria with prayers and exorcism, and if that didn't help, with the stake.
In our time, the disease "hysteria" no longer exists; we now refer to it as depression, borderline disorder, mania, and so the term was dropped from the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) as a mental illness in 1980. But wouldn't it make sense to apply the term to what we've been seeing in the public sphere, in politics, in the arts, and in social networks over the past two decades?
Eric Gujer said in his speech to the NZZ General Assembly on April 23, 2022, "If I had claimed before the 2019 General Assembly that public life would shut down, the audience would have bristled. If I had predicted that visiting a supermarket for long weeks would be the maximum distraction allowed, people would have laughed. If I had predicted that a day at the office would be considered a wonderful diversion, I would have been declared out of my mind."
Undeniably, there have been special circumstances that have greatly affected society in recent years, but there have also been other circumstances that have led to the acceptance of complete or partial lockdowns that are hard to define, like Zeitgeist, like a longing for a turnaround that suddenly makes life shine because it provides meaning, and meaning is what we long for in this God-forsaken age.
The so-called beginning of a new era after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 brought peace and prosperity. In his speech mentioned above, Eric Gujer mentions one element that we have underestimated in our times of peace and prosperity, and that is our imagination. He laments that we lack it because we did not see the key moments of our recent history coming. He writes: "The fall of the Berlin Wall, the war in Chechnya - and, one might add, the war in Ukraine or the Corona pandemic - have one thing in common. It is the lack of imagination that makes us think the world theater knows stability."
I was too young when students in Paris took to the streets in 1968 demanding, "All power to the imagination!" Despite my youth, it was clear to me that such a thing was a dangerous undertaking. It is true what Gujer says about our lack of imagination, and one must have one's qualities in order to safely navigate the minefield of imagination. If we are not concerned with the dark side of geopolitics, we can cling to the illusion that we enjoy peace and security. A pleasant naiveté that I loved until recently, but that we can no longer afford.
An example of hysteria: in Brussels, influential people like my compatriot Frans Timmermans advocate burning wood to reduce CO² emissions. They have in mind a utopia where only green energy is used all over the world. To make this utopia a reality, trees, which are green, are to be burned and replaced by new trees, and when they reach the appropriate size in 50 years, they are to absorb the CO² emitted by the trees burned today. This is not only utopia, it is childish nonsense. And yet the great, powerful body of the European Union in Brussels is seriously engaged in this and is distributing billions of euros in subsidies to implement the plan.
This is the definitive form of "self-deception" - that word, "self-deception," I come across regularly in Eric Gujer. Self-deception and hysteria are two sides of the same coin; they cannot exist without each other; they form a shuddering synthesis that leads to distortions in our view of reality.
"The supposed stability from 1989 on was the ideal breeding ground for self-deception," writes Eric Gujer in the speech mentioned above. This period of stability also saw a growing need for narratives that until recently were far beyond our imagination. We became cocky, telling ourselves that we had achieved perpetual peace, that we could fight virtually any disease, that we could control the climate, and that men could be women and vice versa just because they wanted to be.
If you want to see where hysterical self-deception leads, follow developments in the American media, American universities, the publishing world, and Hollywood. The U.S. military is being taught so-called Critical Race Theory, which is about structures that lead to the oppression of minorities and women - by white men. As we know, much from the US, especially the ridiculous, drifts over to us in Europe, but sometimes the facts are stubborn.
As far as I know, the army of Ukraine did not receive these politically correct American lessons in time. For there, in the front bloody ranks, cruel men are fighting an invasion of other cruel men. Women and children are being evacuated, and no one is asking questions like: Where are the women who identify as men and take up arms? Sure, women serve in the military too, but carrying heavy weapons requires great strength in the upper body, and in that regard, I say this in all humility, men are still favored or disadvantaged by biology, depending on how you look at it.
It looks very much as if postmodern theories have their validity only in times of peace and stability. Once these two have collapsed, the facts automatically penetrate the intoxication of self-deception; then, after millions of years of evolution, old patterns are once again the most effective forms of organization to combat violence, namely with organized counter-violence, exercised by our brutal men who watch over us when we sleep.
In his speech, Eric Gujer quotes Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev: ''We are moving from the age of soft power to the age of resilience.'' Soft power was the West's strategy of using its attractiveness as a weapon. Resilience is the ability of liberal democratic societies to prevent others from using their vulnerability as a weapon against them.'' Krastev adds, 'In the age of resilience, it's the pain you can endure rather than the pain you can inflict on others that counts.'"
Gujer wonders, "How much pain can we take? This question sounds uncomfortably pathetic and old-fashioned. But it's a valid one, especially if we understand it to mean not just physical suffering but the weighing of what disadvantages we accept in exchange for effective sanctions against Putin."
In our era of mass hysteria, most of us no longer have any idea how hard life can be. Many cannot imagine how pitiless life was for many in the nineteenth century, what it was like to survive depending on the seasons and on social forces for whom their own interests were more important than the individual values of people outside their own group. Examples of the poverty and hunger we have left behind can still be seen today in Africa and Asia, but even now, in a world of mass communication and mass tourism, we manage to dismiss these images as abstractions.
The reality of history, however, is that poverty, hunger and war were the reality of human life until the Industrial Revolution freed us from the arbitrariness of nature, weather and climate, and the feudal powers of the time. In the world of technology and art, imagination can, indeed must, reign; but when it conquers the reality beyond, catastrophe ensues.
How much pain can a modern society endure? The University of Amsterdam abolished the term "cum laude" because it meant stress for medical students. The painful pursuit of the best was too much for numerous students who wanted to become doctors. And these young people will soon be the insecure doctors who are supposed to heal us?
Eric Gujer writes: "The pandemic, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine - the super turn of events can be summed up in one denominator. The West has criminally underestimated the importance of security and resilience."
These two sentences alone show why Eric Gujer deserves the Ludwig Börne Prize: he has the courage to rise above current events. He dares to connect the pandemic, Afghanistan, and the current war and bring them back to the one, essential question: Do we still have enough courage and strength to defend our free, open societies and sacrifice to do so?
Eric Gujer writes: "Security has a military component, but not only. It is economic in nature, but not only. It can be bought with money, but not only. Security is also a question of mentality and inner strength. The heroic struggle of the Ukrainians raises awareness that without freedom, security is not worth much."
So Eric Gujer wonders whether our civilization has enough self-confidence to survive in the face of naked aggression, naked barbarism.
To ask such questions and at the same time, as he writes, to protect himself and others from "radical simplifications and absolute truths," he runs the NZZ, a newspaper that is a great institution in a culture where political correctness is rewarded and free spirits are ostracized. Students in Amsterdam demand a safe space to cultivate their own forms of self-deception. Eric Gujer's articles, which appear online under the title "The Other View," provide anything but a safe space. They are unsettling, they often deviate from the "communis opinio," they dare to pierce the jungle of self-deception and hysteria.
At the moment, there is a bit too much wartime enthusiasm in the air, something I associate - perhaps wrongly - with the jubilant mood of 1914. I admire President Selenski, but it makes me nervous to see all the Western politician:ins showing up in Kiev for a photo op with the beleaguered president, who is always casually dressed in a green T-shirt and appears in perfectly staged videos - he doesn't make a move without the advice of an advertising agency.
Eric Gujer was a correspondent in Russia, he witnessed the destruction of Grozny firsthand, and he knows that the idea that Russia can be brought to its knees is a hollow and dangerous form of self-delusion.
Let me cut to the chase: Can I call Eric Gujer the anti-hysteric? Over the past few weeks, I've read through many of his articles and noticed how carefully he peels away the issues he addresses like the skins of an onion. They stimulate the eyes and brain alike. He is never satisfied with the superficial. In clear German, he digs until he gets to the heart of the matter.
Taken together, his articles also have another quality that one only sees through when one places them in chronological order: They take on something tragic-heroic when you realize that he repeatedly appeals to the common sense with which the end of self-deception can be achieved. He does this like a character in a Greek drama who has no choice but to fight, even though it is obvious that he will die. Throughout his work, his love for Western values and Western cultural expressions is evident, summed up in the key word "freedom," which he uses again and again with feeling-a freedom that did not fall from heaven as a gift, but was fought for and bought with sacrifice, and which, with the rise of Asian powers, may become an artifact to be discovered in archaeological excavations in the distant future. Freedom.
Eric Gujer's journalistic work is, in my view, the sacrifice he makes to resist in an increasingly hysterical world before the madness of the day buries us under yet another form of mass deception.
May I thank him for his dedication, diligence and commitment? The 2022 Ludwig Börne Award goes to Eric Gujer.
The speech was given on May 22, 2022 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt.
The NZZ is currently the only newspaper I care to check frequently, daily. The others serve only the soup of the day. Helmut Schmidt once said if he would have to choose between reading either the daily sitreps of the BND or reading the NZZ, he would opt for the latter.
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