Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How are acting and education connected? That’s the question we explored in Room #1023 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Action.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning — sorry for the late start, I realized this morning my phone hadn’t charged, so I had to plug it into the fast charger before we could begin. Let me just bring in everyone who’s already raised a hand, and then we can get going. Today we continue with acting and education — how are the two connected? That’s the question on the table. As always, you’re warmly invited to bring in your own thoughts, so we can see together which direction the room takes. And a quick reminder: we’re recording throughout, so by joining you’re agreeing to that. Good morning — what are your first thoughts on the topic?
Good morning, glad it worked out today. First, I’d add a word to that title: acting and education — acting is education. I had to smile when we landed on that. What came to mind first is that acting relates to putting ideas into practice, while education serves to build knowledge, which in turn lets you acquire new skills and abilities — thank you for that phrasing — and with those skills, become more competent, which then lets you act differently, precisely because of that newly acquired education. That would be my opening thought.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Let’s bring in the next person, and then we can draw the connections between all of your points. Good morning to you too — what are your thoughts?
Good morning. I’d agree with that — when I act, I also learn. Which means it educates me. And I find it hugely important to educate yourself and to act, because otherwise we simply can’t develop.
Thank you so much. And good morning to you as well — what’s on your mind first?
Good morning to you and everyone else in the room. My first thought is that I feel like confusing you all a little today — no, joking aside, this is a serious topic, a really important one, and one close to my heart. First, to find some shared vocabulary, let me recap something we’ve touched on many times before: when we talk about education, we concluded, we’re not talking about knowledge, and we’re not talking about intelligence — we’re talking about the ability, or the result, of constructing yourself: the ability to determine yourself, on the basis of self-awareness and self-efficacy, to steer and control your own life. That was, as I took it, our conclusion. The second conclusion, one we keep coming back to almost as a kind of catchphrase, especially around the topic of learning, was: education, just like learning, is a lifelong process. So today, thinking about our topic — you’d already flagged the subtitle as “how are acting and education connected” — let me step back from that end result, this self-construction, and instead treat it as a production process: which sub-processes actually produce this end product we call education? Looking back at our own history in this club, I think we’d arrived at a fairly consolidated position: that education results from key determining factors — upbringing, learning, socialisation, and the accumulation, or command, of knowledge, skills and abilities. Those, for me, are the sub-processes ultimately responsible for arriving at education. Two more points, and then I’ll wrap up: the unifying thread running through all these processes is change. Every one of these sub-processes that leads to education initiates a change — I deliberately don’t say “adaptation,” because for me that’s just a subset of change — but they change the person being educated. That’s the common thread across this whole landscape of processes, and I find it wonderfully coherent. So, to cut a long story short, coming to our actual topic: it’s relatively simple for me to say how acting and education connect — I go into these sub-processes, learning, upbringing, socialisation, and ask: who’s actually doing the acting there? And there are two essential categories on the meta level: is it me myself? And then there’s everyone else who, within these education-related processes, either takes on responsibility for me, or consciously or unconsciously contributes something. That’s the approach I took, and I did it precisely because this is, once again, a highly complex topic — finding these connecting points, asking who was decisive for my own education, in my own life, and how I was supported, or perhaps held back, in that education, and by whom or by what. That, for me, is really the key question behind today’s topic. Thanks for indulging my admittedly long detour — I clearly enjoyed it.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Let’s bring in one more term to everything you just laid out: competence. Over the last few days and weeks we’ve also talked about self-management competence and action competence — maybe you’d like to pick that up directly, and then we can draw the cross-connections.
Wow, thumbs up for that. What I actually skipped, for time’s sake, so as not to bore you all, is that within any process that produces a product, the production factors themselves are essential to consider. I left that out deliberately, thinking nobody would follow me otherwise. But competence is exactly one such production factor — skills and abilities, or as we’ve worked it out together, competencies, on one side. Of course there’s also the raw material of data and information available to me, which I can draw on to build knowledge. And a really essential point for me is another production factor: my values, and my moral and ethical guidelines — which do shift over time, but which represent a hugely important formative factor in education. Thanks again for that link.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I feel like we’re basically done — we could just close up shop for today, couldn’t we? What do you two think?
I’d agree — I was just thinking, thank you for a lovely room, and I hope you all have a great day.
We can’t hear you yet — I hope the connection hasn’t dropped again. Let’s see. In the meantime, back to you: I heard a segment yesterday, I don’t want to get into politics, but it touched exactly on this — a discussion on Lanz about education and what’s happening in our society right now. There was a guest, and what I found interesting was that another guest strongly questioned whether education actually makes someone a better person, someone with real heart, since education doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with acting rightly. And what I found fascinating, connecting to what was said earlier about the full sociological environment: the example went back to 1933, when the Nazis took power, and the point being made was that the man raising this — a highly educated university professor himself — noted that the first people who caved back then, when it came to which direction Germany would go, were university professors: educated people, people with advanced degrees, people with enormous knowledge. But exactly as you were just describing — becoming aware that education, socialisation, our belief systems, all of it belongs together under one big umbrella that’s ultimately responsible for how we develop, for taking on self-responsibility and so on — I found that highly interesting, because it was framed, I felt, almost as deliberate provocation: does education actually make us better people? Does reading something, absorbing something, make each of us, with our own morals and ethics, a better person? And does education lead our society to develop in a positive direction, however we define that? I find it fascinating that you flagged right at the start that it comes down to these sub-processes. Personally, I do think education matters, no question there, but you can see how many things interact — our environment, what we read, the media, and so on. We wouldn’t have enough hours in the day to go through every individual drawer of that topic. So thank you for that framing.
I’d underline everything you just said.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And I really like that question you posed: does education make us better people? I’d touched on this once or twice recently — we’ve been doing some deep dives with my son as part of homeschooling, and it came up that we compare animals with humans and human behaviour, which raises a lot of interesting questions about why people act the way they do. And that’s naturally a wonderful question to sit with: how could that even be changed? Can it be changed at all? Especially given how often, in many discussions, people assume we’re a species that’s simply progressed further, a species distinct from animals — you can let that stand for now, but when you actually look closely at human behaviour, the question keeps coming back: is that even true? How different are we, really? What actually makes the difference? And how could that be steered so there really is a meaningful difference? I think that’s a wonderful thread to pick up here — it also connects to what I’ll be exploring tomorrow and the day after, namely acting through non-action, and the digital campfire on Sunday, where I want to go a layer deeper and use these rooms to build bridges and make the theses I want to put forward easier to follow. With that, over to you first — what do you think?
The hair on the back of my neck stood up listening to that — not because of anything you said, thank you for that contribution, I’ll try to look that segment up online. But putting those statements together, let me first summarise my own position: education isn’t inherently qualified as good or bad. It only becomes “good” or “bad” education through whoever is doing the judging. And if I connect that to the actual definition of education, then at the very core of every definition is always the “self.” This conscious awareness — what is the self? It’s about me, well aware of the necessary interdependence with my environment, that I can’t be myself without the selves of others. But applying a judgment to that, quite quickly, and I don’t exempt myself here, saying “that’s an uneducated person” — that’s my own evaluation framework, and it’s certainly not necessarily the framework the other person uses, if they’ve thought carefully about their own education. There’s a whole discursive range that opens up here: if education is meant to shape not just a homo economicus fixated on their own expected benefit, but also a homo sociologicus who functions within their environment and contributes something of value to everyone, that’s a genuinely difficult topic, and for me it always comes back to one question — which is exactly why the hair on my neck stood up: who claims the authority, who takes the responsibility, to decide what counts as good or bad education, sufficient or above-average education? And let me add, on your example about our own history, and the people back then, whether they were educated or uneducated because they failed to recognise what was happening — that’s exactly why I think it’s necessary to look at the sub-processes. Because, to put it bluntly, I honestly don’t know whether, had I been born into that same environment, with that same kind of socialisation, taught and raised the way people were then, I’d have ended up with anything like the education I have today. Evaluation — it’s all a question of evaluation. Thanks for listening to that ramble.
Thank you so much. And there we quickly land on the evaluation piece again — which connects to terms we already had in the room earlier: morality and ethics. I find it fascinating to make those entanglements explicit. You wanted to add something too?
Yes — and I’d like to name the person, so it’s easier to place: the man who made that statement is Michael Wolffsohn, a German historian and publicist. That matters to me. And I think it’s so important, and I’ve learned this myself, to keep switching perspectives — I completely agree with what was just said. And ultimately, if you look at the whole discussion, it comes down to exactly that: what environment did I grow up in, what were the environmental factors, what was I fed, and so on — the socialisation and all of that. And these are, more or less, things that will occupy us increasingly over the coming years, with populists tapping into them — we simply need to learn to listen and understand rather than just respond, to look at the underlying processes, and then everyone taking responsibility. Myself included — not shifting responsibility away, but actually taking it on: wherever I see processes I don’t like, I can step in, I can do something. And you’re completely right — who says what “proper” education even is. Everything we’ve discussed in these rooms comes to bear here. And I find it fascinating — if you allow yourself that shift in perspective, even one that might not always sit comfortably, and if you’re open, and at least explore within yourself, go into reflection and ask why you think what you think — then we’re back at education again, because being able to carry out that kind of process at all requires prior education. Someone had to have told me what an incredible thing my brain is capable of, because our brains, if we let them, can make us into completely different people over time, if we look back at our own past and ask: how did I act back then, how did I react to certain things, and how do I act today? How do I judge things today? I just find these processes wonderful. And for me, this transformation as a person, this education as a person, owes a lot to you, Yasemin — because through this exchange, through this Deep Talk Club, I’ve met people I never would have met at the supermarket. Something would be missing without that. Which means you all bear a lot of responsibility here — I’m co-responsible myself, of course, but you’ve contributed enormously to me becoming a different person than I was even three years ago.
Thank you so much. Would you like to pick up on that — maybe with some concrete examples, to make it more tangible?
What kind of examples did you have in mind — around evaluation, or around change?
Evaluation, and also those moral and ethical aspects.
Well, that last part is really the crux of it for me. I might say more about evaluation in a moment, but the moral and ethical piece is, for me, one of the dominant presets that none of us, I’d argue, can escape, tied to that sub-process of socialisation. Because — and you touched on this yourself, from your own biography, if I may use it as an example — the social, cultural, and religious environment in Turkey on one side, and the Christian, Central European environment I grew up in on the other. And fundamentally — and this is why I’m coming to evaluation — this socialisation, from birth, as a being born into a community, is essentially already an evaluative factor that we, in most cases, can’t resist, certainly not in our earliest years. I recall something you’ve said, that the first years of life, up to around age four to six, are crucial formative variables for our moral-ethical foundations, for empathy, arising from socialisation and naturally from an upbringing process. But looked at more closely, those are really more or less overt or latent evaluative processes flowing in alongside. And I think a really essential factor in what I can then call my own education — and here’s my second point, tying back to what was said about taking different perspectives — is something I’ve often been accused of: being “the spirit that always negates.” Within a reflection on our overarching theme, I like to step back and ask: is what my environment gave me, the way I position myself morally and ethically, act, think and then act — is that actually right? So, being delivered, so to speak, into this straitjacket of an inescapable evaluation, becomes for me an essential connecting point for how I go about educating myself. And then we’re back, ultimately, to needing to know that such questions exist at all — questioning myself — and needing the methodological knowledge to actually be able to question myself properly. All themes we’ve had before, and I always find it wonderful how it all flows back together. Thank you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Give me ten seconds, I need to close a window. Where I’d like to pick up is this: on one side we have this evaluation component, where things like unconscious bias come into play — unconscious bias is an aspect that kicks in when you’re born relatively early into a family, into a society, and shaped in a certain way; you carry certain things with you from the start, but you also have the option, afterward, in quotation marks, to make corrections, provided you have the relevant competencies and the awareness to use them. So we have two components here, and especially coming from this evaluation angle — you put it so nicely earlier, whether someone is “educated” or not — looking at it from that angle raises the question: is it always purely a judgment, or can I also recognise certain concrete aspects in someone else, where I notice they clearly lack certain competencies? That would be an interesting distinction to draw out. I saw you wanted to come in, let me give you the floor first, and then you can follow up.
I brought up that segment because everyone watches the news, and I found that particular show really interesting. I don’t agree with everything Mr Wolffsohn said, but that was exactly the topic of the show. When we take in people through integration, they arrive with a certain set of values, a certain kind of education already formed. That education and those values, that morality and ethics, and unfortunately hatred too, whatever comes with it — none of that gets left at the border. And the question the host kept pressing, which I thought was great that he didn’t back down on, was: the issue isn’t what is, it’s what can we do? What can we actually do to change it? I don’t have twenty years to educate someone. I have to react now. And Mr Wolffsohn’s answer to that, I found worth turning over in your head — it’s like traffic. The host argued that if you move to another country, you also carry an obligation: there are certain ways, certain cultures, in which people live together, and you have a duty to adapt. If someone doesn’t take on that duty, or doesn’t accept certain obligations, moral norms, or laws, then it’s really like traffic — England drives on the left, Germany drives on the right. And what can also be done is that the state — not just us as individuals, but the state — has to act. And if the state isn’t capable of acting, meaning it doesn’t enforce existing laws, good or bad, then that too is part of what changes a society. I imagine, even though it’s an uncomfortable discussion, that this is one of the things that’s really moving and changing our society right now. And education is always about being able to discuss this without being purely left, right, or centrist about it — because my motto, and I hope everyone can get behind this, is that being together is always better than being against each other. And I don’t think anyone in this room doesn’t want peaceful coexistence. But the interesting aspects, and the earlier question, whether education can turn someone into a person of real heart — and the further question of whether the kind of integration we’d like to see is even possible at all. Not because I’m pessimistic, but is it possible, and what can we do to make it possible? Because I’m genuinely happy to live in this country, truly happy here, and these things are processes. I’ve gone off on a tangent, but you can tell this topic moves me emotionally. And what I want is simply for us to talk to each other — with each other, not against each other.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And in that context, let me also recall something we discussed before — we’d differentiated whether “integration” is even the right term here, since in many respects what’s really being asked for is adaptation. We landed on the conclusion, in that room, that it would probably be better to speak of inclusion. Just a reminder of that — and now over to you again.
Thank you, Yasemin. Sorry, I’m going to drift a little off the path just laid out — a genuinely burning topic, thankfully. But what you said led me to a question I’ve been asking myself, without an answer yet: we always talk about education in relation to the self — but through what, specifically, can an entire society become educated? That’s the question I jotted down: from a simple point of view, what use is it to me, forgive me for putting it bluntly, if I’m educated by my own standards while everyone else is less educated? What do I do then? So again: is education really only an individual, self-referential thing, or can a whole society be considered educated?
Thank you — the questions just keep getting better.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Yes, a genuinely burning topic, especially against the backdrop of current discussions. And it’s not just the question of whether a whole society can be made educated, but the follow-up question: what would that actually require? If we think back to the room where we looked closely at the connection between learning and education, there was another important component: self-determination not as something purely individual, but as something communal — self-determination as a form of democracy, if you like. Which brings in the whole idea of democracy, and the notion that this is fundamentally a communally conceived form of self-determination. And if that’s what’s meant by education — a communally conceived self-determination — then it has to be thought about at the societal level too, not purely individually. Of course you have to break it down to the individual, but it always has to be brought back together at a higher, more abstract, societal level, so it isn’t just each individual claiming to be self-determined from their own point of view, in quotation marks. And there we’re back at the evaluation component again. Purely from a definitional standpoint, of course anyone can act in a self-determined way — and that can be right or wrong for them personally. But if we look at this on the societal level, against the backdrop of a democratic system, the question becomes: what does it need to look like, societally, for the whole thing to work out as a peaceful, communal coexistence? Over to you.
We can’t hear you yet.
Is that better now?
Just try activating the microphone.
A wonderful link, thank you for that — something I actually dug into yesterday, ahead of today’s discussion. If we see self-determination as a values-oriented perspective — not an action-oriented one, but a values-oriented one — aimed at fulfilling our needs and goals, then that, for me, is exactly the connection into the wider societal construct. I recall we had this theme once before, I don’t remember which specific room title it was under, but I believe it was human dignity. And it’s precisely that connection — from the self to the community — that shaped the preamble and the fundamental rights laid out in our constitution. For example: human dignity is inviolable. There are inalienable basic rights. That, for me, is exactly the anchoring of values orientation, how a society understands itself, and — this is my own interpretation — what it considers, from society’s perspective, self-determination, meaning education, to look like, and the framework within which we move as self-responsible individuals. So a knot I had five minutes ago has actually come undone for me. Thank you for that.
Thank you so much. Would you like to follow up on that too?
You’re on mute again — there, wonderful, thank you.
Coming to this whole-of-society question — in Germany we’re one overall society, and we’re deeply interwoven with each other. Here’s an interesting angle: Islam and the mosques in Germany are, in many cases, staffed and directed by the religious authority in Turkey — that was also discussed on that show. Certain interests get pursued that way, through narrative, through mindset, and so on. That has direct effects on our society, on education, on knowledge, on values and morals. And that brings me back to Mr Wolffsohn, because I’m missing the answers too. If I had a complete answer for how we all become a better society, I’d throw my baseball cap overboard right now, go into politics, and do nothing else. And ultimately, this ties into something we touched on before — how much regulation do we actually need in order to have a certain freedom of speech, and so on. A society can only keep existing if it agrees, each society for itself, on morals, values, ethics, and laws — and if those laws are then actually upheld. I don’t need to re-educate someone. Just as an example: if I were violent, I’d stop the moment I noticed I had a tendency to hurt someone — but society can’t just wait around for me to eventually grasp that violence isn’t a solution. I need to know, as a consequence, that if I walked up to someone on the street for no reason and hit them, that wouldn’t be tolerated and I’d be punished for it. Only if we all abide by shared, democratically agreed rules and laws is it actually possible to live together peacefully — without anyone needing to integrate, and without anyone needing to be included, either. There just need to be certain rules we agree on, and those rules need to be respected. Because if everyone can just do what they want, then it’s simply human nature — you were just discussing this with the animals, with your son, no offence meant — without laws, the stronger simply takes from the weaker, and that, for me, is the biggest difference from animals: that we can communicate, and that there’s someone watching over things to make sure they’re distributed fairly and unfairness doesn’t just happen.
Thank you so much. But I’d like to point out the complexity of this topic here too — I think it’s far too simple to say we just need laws, or that we could just deport someone. We can only have that kind of discussion on one level — in relation, say, to people seeking asylum, or people here with a migration background. But we shouldn’t let ourselves be distracted — this discussion is really about something else, namely: how can education be realised at the societal level? And that matters so much, because otherwise it becomes this kind of “if I don’t like something, I’ll just deport it and that’s that.” But if you look closer, this challenge doesn’t just apply to people coming here from abroad — we also have plenty of people right here, in our own country, who hold very different convictions, some even extremist, who also don’t follow the law, and so on. In many of these cases there isn’t even the option of taking that supposedly “simple” route and saying, well, let’s just remove them. Take, for example — and this gets discussed a lot too — people who were born here, grew up here, hold a German passport, have paid taxes for years and so on. We can’t even have that particular discussion, I think it’s simply off-base. Those people don’t feel at home anywhere else; they’ve never had a home anywhere else. Which means, even if it feels easier, especially around asylum and migrants who are only here short-term, to dismiss it lightly, we actually need to accept the complexity of this topic and discuss it on a different level. Because only on that other level, in my view at least, and I’m curious what you all think, can real solutions actually be worked out. And for people who think differently, who tick differently, especially in a world this globalised, where we’re always at risk of ending up in wars or worse, simply talking about deportation isn’t necessarily a solution either — because sure, you’ve moved them outside the country’s borders, but these people keep acting beyond those borders too. That’s how you end up with terrorist organisations forming, bombs being planted, and so on. So we may need to think bigger than just Germany here. I’m curious what you both think.
I’d like to bring you in here again, and then you too if you’d like, and then we can move into today’s closing round.
I actually had a direct reply for our friend earlier, lost my train of thought, but you’ve put me back on track — with one of your closing phrases, “discuss it on a different level.” I think that’s a genuinely essential point, and I’ll borrow again from the world of business, even project management, if you like: to counter this deeply significant influence of imported unconscious bias, heuristics, preconceptions and the like — I won’t say whether it’s even possible to eliminate entirely, but to push it back as far as possible is my position — rather than starting from one particular fixed position, this “other level” means, for me, jointly answering the question, with everyone involved, of what kind of society do we actually want? Because I think the real root cause here is that both sides start from the same evaluative premise: my society is the better one, yours is the worse one. And to make that reasonably value-neutral — a common method in science, you don’t need me to tell you that — is to work toward a shared thesis, a blueprint, a target picture, that everyone contributes to and says, this would actually be the vision for my society. And then you start defining what each side is able to contribute, or where the levers for change actually are. I think that’s, I won’t say the one true way, but the better way. And in the first instance it requires a constructive dialogue, a genuine will for constructive engagement, respect, and yes, tolerance too — but I don’t think there’s another way to convince anyone to switch, overnight, from driving on the left to driving on the right. From Islam to Christianity, or vice versa. Thank you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And that reminds me — it was in one of our earlier rooms, a while back now, someone raised the question: is there actually a vision for Germany? What’s the vision for where we’re actually headed right now? Can we even identify one? I’d like to tie back into that — fundamentally, in relation to all these societal aspects, we need a vision. And that’s something that seems to be missing right now, which is exactly why it’s difficult: without a target direction, we’re just shooting at random — how can you hit a target hunting without one? It simply doesn’t work. And it’s worth differentiating here between what’s actually being done at the moment, which leans more toward treating symptoms rather than addressing root causes — actually looking at the cause, and asking what’s genuinely needed to make progress. And with respect, this isn’t a discussion we’ve only been having since yesterday. We had it about Italians, we had it about Turks, we had it about Russians. These discussions keep resurfacing, and now we’ve suddenly reached a dimension where it’s no longer just about a country of origin, but suddenly a discussion about religion — and that shouldn’t be underestimated, because historically, how do wars actually start? Often it’s things that have been simmering for a long time, and then one small spark tips it into war. Being aware of that, and handling it mindfully, matters — otherwise we quite quickly find ourselves in a situation where something like a “holy war,” in quotation marks, suddenly breaks out over some small trigger, the way we’re seeing now with the Hamas-Israel conflict. And I don’t think it’s productive, for any country on this earth, to keep discussing things on that level, thinking too short-term, when what’s actually needed, in the interest of peaceful coexistence — and here we are, back at the word “sustainability” — are genuinely sustainable solutions, not just symptom management, quick fixes, supposed solutions that might not be solutions at all. With that, let’s give you the floor once more, and then we can move into today’s closing round.
Thank you — it’s really important to me, for the record, that my point was never about deportation. My point was about laws. Deportation is not a solution, for me. I underline everything you both said — together rather than against each other. Just for context on my own background: my mother was displaced during the Second World War, my mother was a refugee. If she hadn’t been allowed to stay in Germany, I wouldn’t be living here today. I’m grateful to be here. So, very important for the record: deportation was never my point, it isn’t the solution for me either — this is a complex topic we still need to find other answers for. Together, not against each other. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Let me pick up the point about laws too, since we’ve discussed this in other rooms as well — how, whenever something isn’t going smoothly, the call for harsher punishments tends to go up, in quotation marks. We’ve talked about regulation, about laws, about how it’s not really a question of whether laws are needed at all — but just because laws exist doesn’t mean individuals actually follow them, or even agree with them at the level of mindset. And there’s another component here too, even with laws themselves: there are moral, societal, and ethical aspects to weigh, including in how the public judges them. We’d noted before that there are absolutely laws — around taxes, for instance — where getting around them is more likely to be celebrated or smiled at, versus other laws where that isn’t the case at all. So laws themselves can’t really be considered separately from the society around them — worth remembering, and worth folding into these reflections too. Your closing word for today?
Two points on that. First: if you look at how this room developed over the past hour, from the original topic to where we ended up, I keep arriving at the same conclusion — what explosive force, what positive energy, sits inside a topic like this, especially around education and learning. Both are lifelong processes that accompany us, shape us, educate us, and keep calling on us to question ourselves — which is, fundamentally, a core part of our being and our sense of self. That’s my first point. The second is about your last topic together: these tensions we’re facing right now — and I don’t want this to sound like deliberate pessimism, please don’t misread it that way — but looking at the state of the world today, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re in one of the most precarious situations of highly explosive confrontation, because we’re currently digesting three kinds of conflict at once. We have a war between political systems — autocracies and dictatorships against the democratic world. We have, as you put it, a culture war too, quite plainly, and it can be made concrete in the major world religions, Christianity and Islam, and the societal positions tied to them, like liberalism versus its counter-position. And we still have the deeply latent danger — look at refugee movements — of conflict between the northern and southern hemispheres of our planet. From my own vantage point, after a fair amount of time spent reflecting on this, I can only say: the sheer breadth and potential impact of these individual conflicts, and what happens if they interact, is something we’ve never faced before. And so, as my closing thought: what’s called for isn’t just what we think, what we think together in Germany, in the EU — we’ve had that theme before too — it’s a challenge that affects the entire world. No one can exempt themselves from it any longer, and so it’s really an educational mandate for our whole world, our whole globe. Thank you for this fantastic room, and thank you for letting me say that. Have a wonderful day, all of you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I couldn’t have imagined a better way for today to unfold — you’ve built such wonderful bridges, genuinely for tomorrow and the day after too, because that aspect of laws, prohibitions, guidelines and so on, we’ll look at more deeply tomorrow when we explore acting through non-action, in the context of teaching and learning situations, drawing on this as an example. And the other thing you just raised really moves me too, intensely, right now, and I want to leave a lingering question here as well: these things that happen — maybe not purely by coincidence, various factors coming together — but also actually considering to what extent they’re being steered from outside, by political convictions from one side or another, over years, by the way, not just since yesterday, and wherever it’s possible to steer from the outside, my thesis is, there can also be a counter-steering. And the question is: what does it take, viewed on a global level, to actually pick up this idea of education, and what initiatives, what forms might be needed, to actually, in quotation marks — “against” sounds so negative — it’s not about being against something, but about generating a force that makes it possible for something positive to shine through again, if I can put it that way. And that’s exactly the theme I want to pick up and deepen this Sunday at the digital campfire, with a few theses and thoughts of my own. We’ll also look at X and X Spaces in that context, against the backdrop of the discussions happening there, and I’ll bring in the aspect of freedom of speech — what that actually means, how it’s interwoven here, and what it might mean for us. I’m genuinely excited for the rooms tomorrow and the day after — tomorrow, acting through non-action, what that concretely means, how something like that can be shaped, whether it’s even desirable, and what advantages and disadvantages it might carry. That’s the question we’ll look at tomorrow. And at the digital campfire we’ll build bridges in many directions, using X and X Spaces as an example, letting everything we’ve discussed and connected today keep resonating, coming together in exchange, and considering which aspects of it might turn out to be helpful, or carry opportunities we might not consciously notice if we don’t look closely. I’m really looking forward to discussing that with you. And on Monday we’ll bring it all together, rounding off this overarching theme of Action, before moving, as promised, into the next step: reflection, thinking, and acting, and how they connect — something I’m already really excited about. With that, you’re all very warmly invited. Thank you so much for joining today, and for tomorrow and the day after at 8am, so we can keep exploring, in all their many facets, the aspects we’ve discussed over the past days and weeks, and see where it takes us together. Wishing you a wonderful weekend already, and looking forward to 8am tomorrow, here at Deep Talk.
