Our columnist finds the antidote to our angry society in the very places he once ridiculed.
Oktoberfest. How often I would have been tempted to ridicule this festival. Europe’s largest urinal. A city bet on how quickly a population can vomit all over Theresienwiese. Let’s see how many unsuspecting influencers celebrity flytrap Kai Pflaume can lure into the beetle tent this time. Something like that.
But my heme glands are dry. When I think about how an entire city sets out to celebrate together, I don’t feel like dwelling on the primitive nature of it. The collective exuberance moves me. Yes, of course, it is a completely commercialized madness. But ultimately, people meet there with the firm intention of enjoying each other, singing, dancing and yes: drinking more than is good for them.
When I saw in Sorrento in the summer how the whole fishing village, young and old, set out to pay homage to Saint Anne, I felt as if I had just discovered the antidote to our eroding society. But it is so simple. Encounter. Community. How wonderful it was to meet strangers during the European Championships and watch games with them. In the process, to get to know different backgrounds, perhaps to notice one or two ideological incongruities, but: who cares! We are here together. I like you, and whether you think the Greens are crap or think Söder is fit to be chancellor, that doesn’t matter for now. We talk, we wave things off and we get along despite various differences.
No Conversation is conducted just as stubbornly in the analogue world as it is in the digital world, where the radicalization incentives of the algorithms tempt us to carbonize our own opinions and write off the other person as a clueless idiot or enemy of the state in the second comment column. The Internet is a stimulus package for ideological rigidities. We have all been completely on the ropes when it comes to arguments for a long time and reflexively raise our tired arms as soon as a stranger approaches our swollen eyes.
The Barber by Micky Beisenherz
But there is still life outside the social media dairy of outrage. How quickly prejudices break down. If you stumble through the comment columns completely confused, you might think, given the orgies of discussion about closing borders in recent weeks, that Afghans are being given a jackknife instead of a rattle. When I am at the hairdresser and chat with my cultured barber, who came to Germany as a young Syrian in 2015, I quickly realise that every debate about upper limits is about People and Origins That’s why statistics can still worry you, but expanded thinking spaces mean that you no longer fall for some of the dull debates, especially those that are held in Darkroom X.
While the regulars’ table was long the symbol of the communicative backwoods, after ten years of social media it seems to be almost the solution to all problems: Even though there are often a bunch of people with a similar perspective sitting there, at least the chancethat soon new opinions will be added, which will be discussed face to face and not roared If our democracy is not to go down the drain, we need more village festivals, fire brigade anniversaries, more clubs, pubs and cultural centres. Customs that I once despised as a post-pubescent child, I now find almost democracy-strengthening.
Last week, we were once again stuck on the train somewhere in the wilderness between Osnabrück and Hamburg because of an embankment fire. Three men in their late 40s in the row behind me were chatting in a lively and Rhenish manner about things like “men’s dance group”, “triumvirate” and “departure point”. Strange sounds. Mysterious scraps of words. Not just for me, but also for a friendly couple in their 70s. He, the type of food critic, asked in Hanseatic idiom: “Say, I need your help for a minute. I’m hearing various fragments of words that I can’t make sense of. What exactly are you?” It turned out that the men were from the Dormagener Jungs carnival society and were on their way to Kiel by train for a four-day carnival cruise. They had a lively conversation, handed out schnapps and even took photos together wearing carnival hats. Touching scenes of human affection, where in the digital space there would have been little more than a brief expression of contempt.
Yes, every person is different. No, wait: every person is also different. But not onlyThe fact that the other person sees things differently is not always a pleasant fact in a direct encounter. However, we learn through our interactions that this is not everything is what defines him.
Zoom meeting tiles became prison windows
How many hardenings could be massaged out verbally in direct interaction. The possibility that the other person does not want to castrate you at all. We are not: Us against them! I fondly remember a party I attended years ago in a village in Saxony-Anhalt. A wonderful evening, great people. Weeks later it turns out that 70 percent of the people there were anti-vaxxers and corona skeptics. If I had only read about them, they would have seemed like a creepy conspiracy commune to me – typical East Germans! But I fondly remember these nice people who think a little differently in some respects.
Speaking of Corona: It is no coincidence that the contact restrictions, which were absolutely necessary from a virological point of view but were sociologically devastating, triggered the loneliness boost and finally put an end to intensive togetherness. Zoom meeting tiles became prison windows and comment columns became loopholes. The civil war is an invention of the algorithm – thank God the world out there looks different.
A few days ago my mom attended a funeral where, in the midst of collective mourning, an acquaintance approached her with a jovial, wobbly demeanor: “Man, we’ve been neighbors for 50 years now, so we can call each other by our first names sometimes, right?”
Out there, beyond the ones and zeros, even the dead bring people together. While on Twitter and the like, every community dies out.
Everything has to go.