"Customs grow wild, justice is homeless."

Skybird · 04-01-18, 06:57 AM

Nice philosophical essay for an Easter Sunday.

Really. Some witty things being said in there. First published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I give the link for the German original, and then a link to Google'S Bot Translation. Its a bit rough around some edges, but you should get the arguments and points.

German: https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/wir-er...ten-ld.1370201

English: https://translate.google.de/translat...201&edit-text=

Quote:

On the one hand, we have in fact a basic security in West European welfare states, in Germany with Hartz IV or in Switzerland with much more generous social assistance. This does not make life good, but a decline in misery is excluded within certain limits - those who say otherwise have no idea of the mute poverty that affects one billion people worldwide. Only real reassurance would not occur in countries with such a social regime.

I think it was Francis Fukuyama first, who in "The End of History" pointed out that in a materially halfway saturated society, dissatisfactions do not decrease, but increase exponentially. The struggle for recognition only enters the hot phase when it is formally won and all adult non-incapacitated individuals are confirmed as citizens. Here we meet again the law of increasing irritability. After the end of history, if there are any, a dialectic comes to fruition that previously remained hidden: the greater the relative wealth of all, the worse the individual feels, as long as he is not at the top. In a seemingly pacified society, everyone compares to everyone unprotected without being aware of the self-injurious consequences of comparison. In other words, more free-floating dissatisfaction continues to be put into the world than can be tied up with existing means of gratification.

Happy Easter!