Saturday, October 27, 2007

Neo Poppers

During the boring eighties when economy slowed down there developed a new youth segment in Germany as answer to the nihilist punks: the popper.

The popper was everything the punk wasn’t: clean, shaved, with neither too long nor too short hair (actually the favorite male popper haircut looked pretty much like the favored style of the Hitlerjugend), addicted to conservative luxury and brand cloth, apolitical, listening to mainstream pop-music; in short a popper looked and breathed the middle-upperclass kid. Poppers were the nightmare of the family budget, due to the kid’s demand on brands and a red flag in the eye of any political leftist group.

The segment dissolved into mainstream before long. Recently I feel there is a revival in Western society which is quite surprising. I don’t know if there is a new term for the phenomena, I’ll call it Neo Popper.

The Neo Popper is young, beautiful and rich. And he loves it- more so, it becomes his reason for living.

Being rich in former times in Western societies was frowned upon by Christianism. In Catholic dogma the poor was nearer to the kingdom of God and in Protestantism you could be rich out of merit but you were not supposed to boast about it or to expose it too much.

I know of noble families where estates and servants were kept but rest of candle-wax collected out of chandeliers and molten into new candles- not because out of financial need but because of the sin of waste. And I’ve seen several specimen of old European noblesse walk around in cloth patched and torn that even a beggar would refuse, again a sign of horror to waste. French bourgeoisie traditionally walks around in excellent brand cloth, but they are worn long beyond their fashionable life, as a matter of fact they often are chosen because beyond fashion. New things were frowned upon- they looked suspiciously nouveau riche. And nouveau riche meant you had no culture and that you would be ignored by the establishment ( see Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme on that)

Until the Neo popper. The Neo popper is luxury advertising come alive. Imagine somebody jumping out of an advertising for Vuitton or Chanel , trying to live every second of his life as if he/she were a living example of publicity dreams come true. It is almost as if the luxury industry had invented this clientele to keep their market alive.

Maybe some people who dispose of lots of money have always looked down upon the less fortunate, but this time the sole reason to despise the less rich is money. To have or not to have banknotes is a sign of distinction for the Neo Popper- an important sign. My daughter recently showed me a blog whose owner is obsessed with the quantity of luxury goods he buys or with the money he is offered as pocket money. It is interesting that this guy needs to constantly rub it into his readers as far as photographing the produce or the money he is talking about and questioning constantly- do you have the same? Apparently the Neo Popper is a kind of Vampire- for his existence he doesn’t need blood but envy.

A bestseller out is called ‘Hell’ and tells the story of a Neo Popper: luxury as only value, no limits- apparently a life as living advertisement can be hell.

Fault of the parents or mirror of society? The popper syndrome in former times revealed aspirations of belonging – it was predominant in social spheres that dreamt of ascension the youth of the middle classes and in upper-middle classes from developing countries. Parents that supported the exterior signs of belonging secretly hoped that it would lead to a better standing of their offspring. Contrary to the criminal ghetto youth scene that tries to cover their inferiority complex by flashy or sportswear luxury brands, the Neo Popper rather uses consumption as statement: I consume luxury therefore I’m special and rare.

Today the youth harboring neo popper attitudes seem to be more cynical and very aware of their privileged position. In a world of constant change where nothing stays the same and the admired of today are blamed tomorrow the Neo Popper needs to hold on to the illusion that he will always be on the winning side, because he possesses what apparently is the ultimate value- money.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

in memoriam

Tuesday evening died

Michel Kipoke,

who has sacrificed all of his free time ( and I sincerely hope that it doesn't turn out that he sacrificed his life for the cause) to peace in the Great Lakes region for Initiative of Change. May his soul rest in peace and may his memory be honored forever in the countries he worked for. He was a true example of servant leadership.

In case his passing away doesn't have natural causes

I curse anyone who has decided or has been involved in getting him out of the way.

May your subconscious nag on your intestines, let your heart root, may disease make you suffer the same fate. May you die like king Midas, covered with gold you gained out of the wars of others, but unable to feed yourself with the food of mankind.

You who stand in the way of a lord of peace, who wickedly uses poison, who is an arrogant lord of war shall have to answer to the Lord in his darkest hour. And this darkest hour will come, all the gold of the world will not be sufficient to keep man's fate from you. Then you shall face the truth of your mean and petty soul and recoil in horror.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Generations

After you've finished worrying about yourself it's time to worry about the future of your kids and your parents.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

individual and collective myths

We are all great story tellers.
Most of the time, though we don’t use our talent to the benefit of our environment but we use it upon ourselves. We are our own fascinated listener.
Mostly our own private stories deal with the past and our implication in it.

We tend to transform the truth a bit so that we can keep up our self-esteem as shining hero. Anything going wrong tends very much to be the fault of bad circumstance or of incapable and incomprehensive people.

If we have a low self esteem we tend more to go for the: 'oh no! I did it again- that is the proof for my incapacity' storyboard.

Our own private story gets stored away in our conscious memory- the truth often is buried in the meanders of our unconscious. We use our story to keep up our persona, to communicate about ourselves. The more time goes by, the more we tend to believe our own story and slowly it will become part of our own private myth- the myth of our existence.
In that way we adapt our memory contents to the archetypical context of our subconscious. Hence the unconscious ‘recognition’ of archetypical fairy tales and myths that has been put forward by Bruno Bettelheim.

The construction of myth functions on individual level as well as on collective.
In that case the myth is the glue that keeps a community together, that explains its reason of being, its origins and its beliefs.
What comes to your mind when you think of your parents? Your grandparents? Your children? Your wider family? Stories! Stories about problems, stories about events, stories about experiencing together. Those family stories create the family over generations- some can date back hundreds of years.
In my family it’s the ancestor that created a foundation for fun during studies for his descendance; the great aunt who resembled a Madonna in a polish church, who was probably painted with a lost ancestor as model; my grandfather who would saw the branches of the Christmas tree only to fix them again in a more orderly way- the more those stories go back in time the more fantastic they become. The more recent stories deal with more common events- I and my brother remember a confrontation of our usually so calm father with an American hotel owner or the capacity of my mom to always chose the worst plate in a restaurant.

It is those stories that will keep the memory of the clan alive, that will transcend generations- that will represent the family myth.

Lucky the company who has a real foundation myth- like Apple or Tata. The whole style of management and identity of the company is built on that foundation myth.

The historic truth becomes less and less important as years go by- historic accuracy is more and more exchanged for symbolic content that serves as foundation for belief.

Myths serve as basis and carrier of collective conscience. A myth can even do something even more fascinating- it can transmit special powers to people or places. The knowledge of the myth then charges the collective belief in such a way that the power of belief transfers a sacred identity unto people or places.

During my travels in Israel I encountered many places that were attached to a foundation myth. In the end, it wasn’t important if the mythic event really took place at the same spot- the power of the believers charged a place like a battery with sacred energy that can be experienced.

A sacred space is a space where the rules of reality ( or let’s say of the world out there) don’t apply. It has its own rules, its own magic- In a sacred space windows open to our unconscious. That is why any problem of sacred space is so difficult to treat with logic and realistic means. Rational thinkers suddenly become deaf to the voice of reason in such a place- if they are believers.
A sacred space needs constantly to be kept alive by believers- take away those who trust in its powers and it is just another piece of land. What would Lourdes be without the hoards of ill believers that come to the cave to seek healing?

A sacred space needs a founding myth and a keeper or keepers that will keep the myth alive for the existing or potential believers.
And somehow everybody is a believer, even if it is in the almighty power of the market or of technology, and as such we all create our sacred spaces.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Intercultural learning

Being member of the SIETAR –Society for Intercultural education training and research- I attended a conference of Margalit Cohen-Emerique on dangers for identity and self-shock

Margalit develops the intercultural encounter problem not from an cross-cultural point of view but from the general perspective of encounter with the Other.
In her theory the more the other’s behavior surprises, offends or challenges us the more we feel that our own identity is in danger ( unity, continuity, coherence and value) and we tend to have a defence reaction . With this reaction we even become in response a danger to the identity of the Other.
Margalit has observed social workers who work with people from different cultural contexts and rather than focusing on explaining why the culturally different group behaved that way she concentrated on the effect the behavior had in the social worker and what resources he/she could mobilize to face the situation. In that sense her model corresponds to the psychological need of the social worker as being taken serious in his reaction and emotion and it studies what is there and available ( the emotional reaction of the social worker). At the same time it is adaptable to more situations than just the cross- cultural ones and doesn’t need previous knowledge or predictability of possible situations.

Sounds complicated, but actually during the whole Saturday Margalit made her fascinating theory very clear and understandable. I wasn’t bored for a second and my mind raced ahead in making all kinds of associations with my current work. At the same time I realized that although I have a good instinct my theoretical basis on the subject is too thin and I'd be well advised to do some groundwork.
As a plus I got to know a lot of interesting people- I think I’ll have to sign up for more conferences of SIETAR.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Thoughts about the brain

Neuroscience has discovered that what makes our personality and behavior is dependant on an inner chemical laboratory:
serotonin for harm avoidance, dopamine as regulator for novelty seeking, norepinephrine controlling our reward dependance, oxytocin as social contact regulator, endorphin managing pleasure...
That makes human thought dependant on stimuli ( electrical) or chemistry. In other words we are much less free than we think. If I can make you feel sad enough to almost commit suicide by stimulating a specific part of your brain, where does your own self come in? Or to spin the thought further- if all of our thoughts are electricity and chemicals what are we without our body?
On the other hand if the chemicals control the way we feel and think, there is also a way to control the chemicals. You can calm down in taking a deep breath ( and lower your adrenaline high) - what brought you to the decision to calm down?- there was a choice: you could have become more excited! Was there more or less serotonin involved in making a choice? Or to spin this thought further: is there first an impulse thought - or is there first a chemical? ( the old hen and egg question)
On more complex levels- thought can make you sick - or it can cure you or help in the cure- which means that the mental chemistry and the chemistry of the rest of the body are closely linked. Who has the final power over whom?
All the neuroscientifical research explains about conscious behavior and its deviation reasons- what about our subconscious? Since we don't really know what is in there how can we know by what it is controlled?
And where does patterning come in? Our bodies and minds are constructed not on detailed static chains for actions but on patterns that can be adapted to contents of situations. Patterns are repeated from the simple to the complex. ( ex. the learning mechanism of a child uses the pattern of 'copying' of cell- growth) Are the chemicals the 'patterns' of our brain?
What is the role of hazard in this chemical laboratory? Is hazard our freedom of choice chemically speaking? ( a molecule was walking by by accident and fitted into the receptor?)

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

the paradox of success

If you want to be a performer today you must:

in the world of reality

- be flexible - but act right

- change strategy- but be successful

in your mind:

- question your beliefs- but keep your roots

- think holistic- but know who you are


but most of all-

be as sensitive to stress and emotion as a log.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Thoughts, talk and the written word

Our own personal reality reflects and influences our thoughts. There is continuous flow in between the sensory information we get from our body and our environment and the processing of this information.
Like I mentioned in my last blog, we perceive not all in the same way, we interpret according to our learning experience, we evaluate the consequences and act upon the result and our memory stores the information.
According to our personality we will prefer to ponder on consequences and actions ourselves or we will refer to outside sources to check upon consequences and actions- we prefer to have the reactions and advices of others.
I like to keep things for myself, or I like to share a problem. That means that our inner thoughts and emotions either turn in our heads or are voiced out.

Thoughts and speak will then be fixed in the memory- or will they?
Try to remember the last for you important talk you have had with somebody. You will probably be able to recall your principal arguments about what was important and the general reaction of the other side… but do you remember every word? Maybe there were important parts that you didn’t notice as important and therefore didn’t store in your memory.
But today, there are other parts that have grown in importance and suddenly you remember those much more clearly than the rest that has been said.
Did you ever have somebody being mad at you for something you supposedly said and you don’t have a clue what he is talking about? Obviously it wasn’t important to you but it touched a sensitive point in the other and its importance grew in time and now that is about the only thing he remembers.
Family feuds and important conflicts can be constructed on selective and transformative memories that are solidified in the shape of a myth- in the end nobody knows the real story anymore.

The same thing happens when we ponder in thought, the more days go by, the more our memory about past reflections transforms: certain aspects are enhanced, others are diminished. Small events are being blown up according to what fits into our actual state of mind.
If I am convinced that my colleague is stupid I will clearly remember all his mistakes and when he made a fool of himself, but somehow the events where he helped me on a file or where he had a vital information to give are reduced to minor hazard in y memory.

Speech and thought are therefore unreliable sources for generating accurate memories- that is why some cultures prefer the written word. But even writing doesn’t protect from misinterpretation in later times. According to our environment we tend to interpret a text.
A word can have a different meaning in different contexts and cultures. The right definition of words is one of the obsessions of law.
A lot of sacred texts are today understood like a news report- as relating facts. At the time they were written, symbols were important, not facts. We live in a world based on facts so we will look our and interpret information as facts.

Still, concerning our own life-span and culture the written word seems to be quite reliable as source of memory about history. Historians basically work with written or recorded material.

We can use this reliability of writing for ourselves. Instead of brooding on our evaluations of informations, actions to take and on our emotions, we can write them down. When we write them down, we can look at them- today, tomorrow, in a month. Our attitude may have changed then, but our mind can’t cheat us: that is what we thought. An outside memory of our inner states of mind.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Perceptions are my reality

It is easy to see things in a detached manner if you’re not concerned or if you have the necessary distance.

It is more easy for the hermit on the hill to practice detachment than for the consultant. It is easier for the consultant to have the necessary distance because he is less concerned.

One colleague of mine almost broke out in tears at a training session when he said what he appreciated most about his present life and his job was that he didn’t carry that immense burden of result anymore.

Even if you’re a stable person, in harmony with yourself, arriving at the office Monday morning smiling and happy, 5 minutes later this smile will be non existent and the demon of reality will take over when you learn of the incredible mess lets say a production has made contrary to your detailed instructions.

Reality is what matters around us in our lives, what we feel has an impact. It can be the acts of others ( in positive or negative sense) it can be the weather ( when you forgot to take an umbrella), it can be your own body ( that lump in your stomach).
The most important element is that we believe it to be real and what we believe to have an impact on our life and thinking.

A fool often is just somebody whose reality seems unbelievable to others. ( in the movie North Northwest by Hitchcock even the mother of the hero doesn’t believe his story- this is an important element in a lot of psycho thrillers)

Observation is checked by our own mind according to probability and own experience. Real for us is what we believe to be real. Reality is what we know out of our own experience to be important and relevant for us.
A social worker probably has trouble understanding the importance of flexibility of working hours, which for any production manager is an important reality. A production manager on the contrary will have somehow trouble understanding the importance of a worker being present at a school meeting of his child. ( Unless, being a father, he relates to the problem out of his own experience) A common problem in between husband and wife is the difference of realities of their worlds. The more their realities differ, the less they will be able to understand each others concerns.

In a schizophrenic’s or paranoid’s reality persecution will often play a huge role. For such an individual there is plenty of evidence of this fact in the act and the deeds of the people around him.
While I was shopping in a big department store I once had the lady who was walking in front of me swirling around and yelling at me to stop persecuting her. My defence that I just happened to be there on my own errand didn’t make the ‘persecution’ she had observed ( I had accidentally taken the same staircase and moved to the same floor as she) less real. She just had a different interpretation of my intentions in her reality.
The same way we tend to interpret what is happening in the world around us according to our reality. Most of the time, we manage to understand the reality of the other sufficiently to act coherently and in accordance of what the society around us expects. The more the reality of the other resembles our own, the better we will be at this. .

Reality ultimately is what we trust to be true. How can I trust what somebody tells me? In evaluating the probability that his words are true according to my own experience and what I have heard from reliable sources. During the Nazi regime there were lots of rumours of what happened to the Jews but most Germans ( including a lot of German Jews ) wouldn’t believe the tales as they seemed too horrid to be real. When our imagination and capacity to relate to our own reality fails, even the ‘proof’ leaves us strangely aloof.
A massacre in Rwanda left Westerners less touched than the attack on the twin towers.

If a fact comes to our notice of which we cannot evaluate the validity for our reality we will rely on information surrounding the fact: is the source relevant for my reality in my experience? Is an authority that I consider important in my reality giving me the assurance that this fact is important in my reality?
Would you rather believe these ideas to be a valid approach if, lets say, Steven Covey expressed a positive opinion on it? Then your reality reflects that Steven Covey’s ideas are valid for yourself and mine might be equally valid for your reality.

Those inner procedures of our mind don’t validate the absolute truth of reality. They just validate the relative truth for us.
A fact we too readily tend to forget.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Friday, January 12, 2007

Perfection

Perfection
We don’t admit it or are aware of it, but one of our goals in life is perfection.

Perfection in our looks, our happiness, our career, our house, our friends….

Our communication is oriented towards communicating this perfection: in job interviews, with friends, family, potential lovers- look I’m great, I’m special, my life is gorgeous.

Advertising does its best to convince us that perfection is out there: photoshop has enhanced the capacity to glamorize models: elongate legs, enlarge eyes, blow up upper body parts and reduce the midline, and everybody is smiling in bliss or looking very cool.
Characters in any soap opera seem to have an exciting life, full of events, emotions and drama.

Even if we try very very hard to make believe, somehow our life doesn’t seem to come up to the standard of perfection that is suggested to us.
We start to see the flaws- overweight, tiny bust-line, no muscles, no energy, no exciting friends, no events- life seems dull.

As hard as we try, somehow something always seems to keep us from our perfect image, the way we want to be. And any event leaves a bad taste- there is always something wrong to it that keeps us from enjoying it fully.

What is perfection? Somehow it seems linked to purity, something that is ideal and not spoilt but flawless.

Perfection is a mental ideal we have constructed , and this mental ideal changes according to our culture and according to time.
Nature seems to have a different law of perfection. In nature nothing is pure : that is one of the laws of life.

A fish in H2O, pure water,will die.

Although one of the laws of life is symmetry, you will not find perfect symmetry in nature:
Neither in a leaf, nor in a human face, nor even in a snowflake.
A cut diamond is a tiny fraction of a raw diamond which had lots of faults. Purity exists next to imperfection.

Rather , in nature perfection expresses through harmony, through a certain equilibrium in the circles of life.

Harmony and equilibrium are laws of nature we tend to forget.

Instead of looking for lacking perfection, try to look for the harmony of imperfection

- those flaws that make us human,
- the dirt that contrasts a clean spot ,
- the noise that enhances the moment of silence,
- the wrinkles that make a smile eternal.


Coming back from my travel to India I can see how much harmony and beauty surrounds me of which I don’t tend to be aware, maybe that is why I adore India-
an image of imperfect eternal beauty.

Monday, January 08, 2007

My reality

Since 24 hours I’m back in Europe. Back in the western reality.
The change silences the voice- the extrovert as well as the introvert. I feel holistically mute- and just my eyes move and observe- register.

As any person confronted with difference my mind seems confused- what is real? And that is not only an after effect from changing the geographical scenery.
It is a typical frequent travellers disease- you change the scenery but you take your reality with you.

At home I don’t tend to notice that my reality isn’t the same as that of my neighbours. Of course I find that some of my friends overreact concerning some situations, but I put it of as part of personality.

The problem arises when my reality collides with that of others. That usually happens when situations or way of life differs. The more difference, the harder the collusion.

Who hasn’t been annoyed with good friends who suddenly turn boring after becoming parents or after marrying? On the other hand, some all time bachelors seem to become increasingly weird with age. The home maker seems to lack understanding of some of the realities of life and the friend who started to work is suddenly much less adventurous.

What happens if my reality is extraordinary, exotic and an adventure and collides with that of routine and everyday life and worries of others? They don’t get my passion; I don’t get their lack of time.

In another life of mine I used to room in with Peter, a flight attendant. Our greatest fight were about our reality mergers: Peter didn’t want exotic food at home; he didn’t want to go to a restaurant- all of that was working routine for him. On the other side, having a few days off in the middle of the week after a long trip, Peter just didn’t understand why all of his friends weren’t queuing up to see him- he was all available and ready to meet them. He never seemed to understand that our life continued in his absence and we couldn’t just stop it for him, once he was there.

My reality seems over important to me, so much that I often don’t see the reality of the other, or that I have to constantly remind me of the difference. I get frustrated if others fail to understand my world- my emotions don’t allow for different realities- they want to world to be just mine.

Thanks to all who came and merged their reality with mine for an instant in those recent weeks- through you I learn constantly about myself.