(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Was Jesus really just a kid who popped up his own father in heaven? the philosopher asks Peter Sloterdijk in his new book To God ("After God," see the newspaper, page 32). Germany's big stamps just turned 70 years and were devoted to an in-depth interview in Der Spiegel. Next month will be his book In the same boat in Norwegian.
Sloterdijk believes that we have long since killed the father of Jesus: We believe, like Nietzsche, that God is dead. Ie that religion, traditions, genealogies and rituals are weakened – in what Sloterdijk now calls our new "globalization of mobility" with our globalization.
Newspaper Class Fight has recently shown that more than before are negative to globalization. And one can see that many perceive it as threatening, where strangers knock on the door and threaten their national identity and welfare. Furthermore, it has been difficult enough to bring people together into one nation, so why would one be willing to enter into a diverse world citizenship?
In the aftermath of the new Norwegian Sloterdijk book In the same boat translates Anders Dunker that the world is now forcing people to stay together through the mass media even wooden sing – "a constant dissemination of common problems and possible dangers, with terrorist threats as a parade example."
According to Sloterdijk, the way forward here is that over time we have developed in different "spheres of immunity" – in protected local communities. The original herd – the family and the small, old communities – have all had their techniques and rituals for unity and protection in a warm interior. So we are not yet ready to embrace the fast-paced and ubiquitous global community, according to the philosopher. The phase of globalization gives rise to anxiety: "Living in a synchronous world is an enormous attack on human mental structures."
Sloterdijk, who was politically active in the radical 68 movement, has with age become more conservative. Now, it's not an old-fashioned 1800th-century conservatism he defends – where one "preferred 100 years of despotism over three days of anarchy". His own so-called historical conservatism, on the other hand, is mixed with anthropological pessimism. Because he wants to preserve the order that society has painstakingly built up. New "small progress" should not tear this down. Because, as he says, there is no guarantee that the next generation will be able to live in peace, with welfare and state protection.
Interestingly, his point is that the judiciary and solidarity have so far only been able to be built within national frames. In contrast, Sloterdijk mentions how "a fraction of the left or left anarchists ... whenever a nation or national interest, identity and tradition is mentioned, considers this a crime against humanity". Like Theresa May, Sloterdijk sees that one easily loses its foothold in today's post-national mobilized nowhere, "Where no one knows until now how new functional order structures can be formed". That the anarchists want to reconstruct other alternative worlds, he calls only a negative reiteration of Bakunin's thesis: "Only by pulverizing the existing can a new society emerge." Well, today's anarchists are probably more pragmatic than thinking about revolution.
"You Must Change Your Life" is also the title of one of Sloterdijk's new books. You have to go ahead yourself. To this, one can comment that with the media's coverage of terror and people's cry for security, we are in danger of entering a regressive era. And although Sloterdijk's "Das Zeitalter der Sekurität" has not yet fully occurred, it is questioned whether we do not now need more globalization than more nationalism. For in a world of more dictatorships and autocracies than democracies, Roosevelt's old idea of "freedom from fear" does not seem bright. And democracy is, according to Sloterdijk, a "cover term for the structures of the exercise of power" – the world is organized and ruled oligarchically by, and belonging to, the minority.
today's anarchists are probably more pragmatic than thinking about revolution
Now in July: The G20 Summit declares open trade rather than protectionism, and common environmental requirements. National environmental policy can be weathered without overall global orders. We have to get rid of the carbon sin. And the UN nuclear ban meeting shows how many countries that are now banning, shamefully, Norway is out of the question. National politicians are not so conscious of the large community, which is also "forgotten" in the party programs.
The point is that we are in the same boat: We all stay on Earth spaceship. In the global community, it is actually possible that people elsewhere than in Norway can think more responsibly than us. We need more like Eva Joly in the European Parliament and others who work for supranational ethics and law. EU laws already protect your working hours, the environment, water and air quality, and are strict about new technology and medicines etc. Let me also remind you of the problem of global companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. They escape with minimum tax to some "smart" nations like Ireland, rather than paying reasonable taxes back to the community they serve.
The "cosmopolitan" itself was jokingly described 2500 years ago as a commuter between the boat buoy and the sky. Yet, in today's trade-offs between freedom and security, some people – including anarchists – are already ready to live in the post-national hypersivilisation. Despite all the secure immunization and security requirements, one cannot reverse the internet, tourism, multi-ethnicity and international trade.
As Sloterdijk mentions in Spiegel, philosophy first emerged as a therapeutic cosmology – "in an attempt to make man feel at home in an expanded world".
Also read: Norway's place is in Europe, interview with Eva Joly
