Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). I wrote the following text in 2017 and published it on my blog. In the meantime, attempts are being made to cover up the vacuum described with more empty phrases, while the foundations continue to crumble. Thoughts on Easter.
It was a strangely empty Easter this year. My girls are now too old for egg painting, so I thought it was time to explore the myth (and similar myths surrounding it) and looked for a simple introduction in the TV programme, but was surprised to find that Easter is no longer about Easter.
Now, we are atheists, and one would think that this gap would delight me. When it comes to the skirmishes that take place in the public sphere, such as whether ‘Life of Brian’ should be shown in cinemas on Good Friday, my position is clear; the same applies to crosses in public buildings. But it does not delight me; I see it as an indication of a deeper and more threatening emptiness.
I would have liked to talk to my daughters about what makes human life meaningful or even valuable beyond consumption; after all, grappling with such questions is the classic task of adolescents; but I realised that there is no room for this in the cultural discourse provided by the media. In earlier years, the period before Christmas and the period before Easter were at least a temporary interruption in the extensive silence surrounding social issues, and there was an attempt to recognise that ordinary everyday life is not all that defines or should define human beings. Even this small window has now closed.
Such irritations always tempt me to dig deeper. Why does the emptying of these holidays make me anything but happy? What is it that I miss about Easter without Easter? Is it the resistance that can be read in the Easter story?
No, it is something else, and the gap runs deeper, to the very foundations of human society itself.
To explain what I came across, I must first clarify a linguistic inaccuracy in German. German uses the same word, Opfer, to describe what English refers to as ‘victim’ (the unwilling victim) and ‘sacrifice’ (the willing victim). (In Latin, these terms are also distinguished.) So, to begin with, I would like to clarify that I am referring to the concept of voluntary sacrifice. This is the core of the Easter narrative, and also the core of the associated ritual behaviour (during Lent). This image of sacrifice is disappearing and being replaced by a worldview that only recognises perpetrators and victims (in the sense of ‘victim’). This is evident not only in everyday culture, but also in the language used by young people, among whom ‘you victim’ is considered an insult.
“John Maynard was our helmsman,
he held on until he reached the shore,
he saved us, he wears the crown,
he died for us, our love is his reward.
John Maynard’ (Theodor Fontane)
Every culture has such heroic stories; even the bourgeoisie of the 19th century still knew them, as Fontane’s poem proves. To find them, one does not have to look to the history of wars and the Battle of Thermopylae. Of course, these images and myths are abused, but they are fundamental to every human culture, and the behaviour they set as an ideal is, in a wide variety of situations, actually a prerequisite for survival as a group or as a species.
Human culture is based on cooperation, and sacrifice is nothing more than the extreme form of cooperation. The fact that stories of sacrifice are recalled in a wide variety of ways is at the same time an affirmation of cooperation, the cornerstone of human existence.
There is a very interesting series of experiments conducted by the Max Planck Society for Evolutionary Anthropology in 2012. They gave primates and toddlers a task that they had to solve together and observed the behaviour of both in dealing with the reward. The primates cooperated to solve the task, but afterwards each monkey sought to secure the largest possible share of the reward for itself. Among the toddlers, a change occurred between the ages of two and three: the three-year-olds made sure to share the reward. They had a sense of justice that guided their actions.
This difference in behaviour has far-reaching consequences. The selfishness of great apes means that cooperation is only possible in the short term, for a single problem. They can recognise the need for cooperation, but they cannot maintain it. Human children treat cooperation as a fundamental, permanent necessity; only if the result is shared fairly will those involved continue to work together.
This behaviour is the result of the fact that the development of human culture, indeed the survival of the species itself, was and is only possible through lasting cooperation. Many traits that we consider characteristic of humans are also found in our closest relatives – they wage war and make tools. But there is one crucial difference that has enabled us to accumulate and pass on knowledge and skills over thousands of years: the ability to cooperate. And it is not insignificant that the concepts of justice and cooperation are so closely linked …
Culture arises when cooperation transcends the span of individual human lives. When the knowledge acquired by individuals is passed on, at least in part, to the next generation and forms the basis for their further development. Einstein once said of himself that he was a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant, referring to Isaac Newton. But even Newton is a dwarf standing on the shoulders of that unknown giant who invented the wheel. This long chain of sharing is our strength, which has led us into space.
This necessity of cooperation can also transcend the span of individual lives in other ways, as in Fontane’s poem. There are situations in which the welfare of the whole (which can sometimes encompass the entire human race) depends on individuals recognising that their personal welfare is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This may be fictional in the Easter story, but it is precisely at this point that deep cracks can be seen in our Western capitalist society.
“The most valuable thing a person possesses is life. It is given to him only once, and he must use it in such a way that he will not later regret years wasted in vain, that the shame of an unworthy, futile past will not weigh him down, and that he can say when he dies: ‘I have devoted my whole life, all my strength, to the most glorious cause in the world – the struggle for the liberation of mankind.’’ (Nikolai Ostrowski)
When comparing the two major disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima, there is one crucial difference. In Chernobyl, the chain reaction was stopped, while in Fukushima, three melted cores are still reactive.
The technical difference is that in Chernobyl, in response to the explosion of the reactor, tonnes of boron were dumped onto the glowing mass from helicopters. When boron melts with the atomic lava, it slows down the chain reaction, which is no longer slowed down by water, and ensures that the lava cools down and hardens. This is the only reason why it was possible to stop the further spread of radioactive substances in Chernobyl by means of the concrete sarcophagus. A molten core that remains reactive continues to melt into the ground (known as the ‘China Syndrome’) and can spread new fission products into the environment via the groundwater. This is what is still happening in Fukushima today.
What should have happened in Fukushima was to blow up the innermost shell and inject a massive amount of boron, as in Chernobyl.
However, the helicopter pilots in Chernobyl paid for their efforts with their lives, as did many others who helped contain the disaster there. The following video provides an example of this (and an occasion to commemorate their sacrifice): The narrative of Chernobyl here in the West has always loudly claimed that all those who helped fight the disaster in the Soviet Union did not know the danger they were in and were sacrificed by their ruthless government. They were therefore victims in the English sense of the word, not heroes. However, scientific education was far better in the Soviet Union than it was here. I graduated from high school in 1981 and only had detailed knowledge of nuclear power plants because I had taken advanced chemistry classes. Not only secondary school pupils, but also most grammar school pupils simply learned nothing about it. In the GDR, this topic was taught in the tenth grade …
The story of their actions reads completely differently when the unwilling victims are replaced by willing ones, as in the video above. Not only because this raises the question of whether we owe these people a debt of gratitude, here too, but also because it raises another question: whether there would be enough people in our society who would be willing to make this sacrifice.
Fukushima has answered that question. There are not enough.
There was not even enough courage in the Japanese government at the time to immediately expropriate the Tepco corporation in order to actually tackle a national disaster as a nation and, for example, deploy those pilots who had at least theoretically committed themselves to being prepared to make such a sacrifice, the Air Force helicopter pilots. No, the government wanted as little to do with the whole thing as possible, and hardly anyone would be willing to sacrifice their life for a corporation; the idea is absurd. The consequence is that, to this day and for the foreseeable future, these three still reactive molten cores (the ongoing chain reaction ensures that the cores remain hot and liquid) continue to release radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean. The consequences this will have for the entire human race cannot yet be estimated…
Yes, the risk of this specific form of disaster is man-made. But every human society is subject to the risk of disasters of various kinds, and its ability to cope with them determines its physical survival. At this point, the Soviet Union possessed a strength that our society does not have.
‘There is no such thing as society.’ (Maggie Thatcher)
Human society is evolving towards ever higher levels of cooperation, in ever larger spaces and contexts. Marxist historiography calls this the development of productive forces. Today, cooperation has reached unimaginable proportions (as shown, for example, in the documentary film ‘World Factory’) and is on the verge of taking the next big step with what is called ‘Industry 4.0’. But this cooperation takes place unconsciously; the producers involved do not know how far it extends or with whom they are cooperating; they do it involuntarily. Everyday consciousness, which emphasises competition between everyone, is developing in exactly the opposite direction. Or is being developed in the opposite direction.
Since cooperation has been and remains so central to the survival of our species, the human psyche has developed accordingly. Working together is more enjoyable than working alone, recognition is experienced more positively than material rewards, and actions that are perceived as meaningful are more satisfying than those that are meaningless. The war of all against all is a constant violation of this structure. Even to develop a sense of ‘I’, we need the other, the group; what is offered is ‘Germany’s Next Top Model’ and the dream of unlimited consumption, which is unattainable for most people.
What was the pursuit of happiness (actually happiness in the sense of lasting satisfaction) at the beginning of bourgeois society is now the pursuit of possessions, the true ideal of today’s society. Because the satisfaction of true needs is impossible or not expedient (if, for example, everyone had affordable housing, they would be less docile), but the production machinery needs sales, countless false needs must be invented and instilled, needs for certain brands and objects. The individual, who is supposed to be able to develop fully under these conditions, is left empty and disoriented.
They are not supposed to take their share in real cooperation. In the realm of knowledge, the easier it becomes to cooperate and share technically, the more artificial new hurdles are erected to subject it to corporate control. What is in reality just a brick in a building that dozens of generations have worked on thus becomes the private property of individuals. In order to be able to make such claims to ownership, it is necessary to conceal cooperation, i.e. the collective nature of human work, behind a smokescreen.
‘There is no such thing as society,’ said Maggie Thatcher, the prophetess of neoliberalism. She was wrong about her present at the time. But for our present, the danger is real – people who are deprived of cooperation will eventually no longer be able to cooperate; then society will indeed disappear. It’s just unfortunate that our species cannot survive with the mentality of primates.
Am I just imagining this? No, our society today rewards psychopathic behaviour; it is conducive to career advancement and a prerequisite for access to the upper echelons. A recent study has shown that even the choice of study is made in such a way that psychopaths end up where the power lies, at the top of corporations, while ‘normal’ people eke out an existence in lower-paid positions. When money and possessions are the ultimate measure of success, it is the antisocial personality that becomes the ideal.
‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness: the demand to give up the illusions about their condition is the demand to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in its essence the criticism of the vale of tears, whose halo is religion.’ (Karl Marx)
This dehumanisation of today’s society is the reason why I find the secularisation that is taking place here so deeply repugnant. It is not the human ideal elevated to the heavens that is being realised on earth, rendering its projection superfluous. It is a society of anti-ideals that must destroy even the projection elevated to the heavens.
There is no longer any idea of a better future, and the goal of human development is the psychopathic egomaniac; an image so far removed from human nature that even the memory of it must be erased. What takes its place, that concoction of capital worship and value babble, is so insubstantial that the last sermon of the last backwoods preacher seems like an intellectual revelation. A surrogate of a surrogate, the reversal of the second derivative of mindless conditions, ideological simulation on the intellectual level of an advertising clip, behind which lie uninhibited servitude and unbridled imperialist megalomania. Sometimes I wonder how Marx would react if he saw the state in which capitalist society now finds itself. Disgusted? Horrified? He would probably say that this degree of decay is the result of delaying the transition from one social formation to the next for too long, and he would be right.
Religion has become a nuisance to the believers in Mammon; if it does not adequately empty itself, abandon every social claim, every human ideal, as in Takfirism or American television churches, it only hinders the formation of the ideal slave labourer/consumer. But for any real change, there needs to be a counter-image to the existing order, a vision of another world, another life, of everything that is swept aside under the slogan ‘there is no alternative.’ Suddenly, I find myself closer to the followers of Christianity than to the followers of capital, because for the latter, the very idea of humanity is anathema, a fall from the true faith. At the same time, resistance needs the idea of sacrifice in order to gain strength; all the hip Internet protests that do not clash with the idea of consumerist individualism, that demand no sacrifice, are empty gestures, entertainment, bloodless games that absorb dissent and at the same time pull its teeth. Real change needs Ostrowski’s attitude. Perseverance, tenacity and the willingness to make even the ultimate sacrifice.
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man may wear the unimaginative, comfortless chain, but so that he may throw off the chain and break the living flower. (…) The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, that is, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded, enslaved, abandoned, despicable being, conditions that cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman at a proposed dog tax: Poor dogs! They want to treat you like human beings.’ (Karl Marx)
