#1019 Acting and Self-Responsibility

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What does acting have to do with self-responsibility? That’s the question we explored in Room #1019 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 to you all. Today we continue with acting and self-responsibility, and want to explore the question: what does acting have to do with self-responsibility? As every morning, you’re invited to join in, bring your own impulses based on your own experience, and let’s see which direction the room takes today. Quick reminder: the room is recorded the whole time and published afterward, so joining means you’re agreeing to that. And with that, let me mute myself and see who wants to open today’s round on acting and self-responsibility.

Good morning to the round — I just noticed I got the notification that I can speak, funny how that works. It’s a nice feeling, being allowed to speak and actually being able to. Good morning everyone, lovely to start the week with you all. I’ve learned so much from you, and so much from our friend too. Let me start with terminology again, that helps me structure a room. I’d define self-responsibility, first, as relating to a person’s ability — I deliberately don’t say duty, because nobody has to do anything — self-responsibility is a person’s ability to be responsible for their own acting, their decisions, and their own life. At the same time, it means bearing the consequences of your actions, becoming aware of them. And the consequences of my actions, this is where it gets more complex, don’t just affect my own life — if I have a family, or I’m an entrepreneur with employees, my actions inevitably affect others too. The best image I can think of, and this applies to everything we discuss, is that self-responsibility is like a kind of alternating current — it always has an effect, not just on me, but on countless areas.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And especially with the term self-responsibility, we already have that “self” built right in. I could imagine our other friend might want to build on this too, if he’s able to speak right now — you’re warmly invited to join, of course everyone else too, to first gather different aspects of self-responsibility, before looking at how we can use all this to build the bridge to acting. And I see he’s actually requesting to speak right now, so let’s bring him in. Good morning — what do you think?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you — a bit quieter than usual and some background noise, but we can understand you just fine.

Alright, good. I have to pass today, but I wish you a great session regardless — unfortunately I can’t fully engage with this topic today. I’m basically out of commission most of the day. I’ll listen in as much as I can, though. But as an impulse to leave in the room, for what it’s worth: self-responsibility, when you look at the whole context between thinking and acting, is essentially the icing on the cake, what everything ultimately flows into — that for whatever I’ve reflected and thought about, I’ve translated it into action, after weighing perspectives, generating alternatives and so on, and at some point I decide and say, and for this action I now take responsibility. But as I said, sorry, especially on this topic today, I’ll listen along for as long as I can. A wonderful start to the new week to you all. Thanks for having me.

Wonderful, thank you so much, and let’s see what else we can build from here. Would you like to build on that too?

Yes, thank you, I know today isn’t a good fit for you, thank you for sharing your thoughts anyway. And you said something really important, almost a closing statement already — taking responsibility for your own actions, becoming aware of it, carrying your own responsibility. That’s a really important aspect for me too, one I hope we come back to when I give examples from different situations, because I find I can work through a topic better when I picture situations where I carry responsibility for my own actions — in a partnership, professionally or privately, when there’s a separation. And we humans, I’ll just say this applies to a lot of people, always look for answers to things that happen, because we also have a desire to understand things. And you once told me something I thought about for a long time — that taking responsibility for our own actions also means we’re no longer in a victim role. Best example, since I already started with it: a partner leaves us, and most people then dwell on, how could he, I don’t understand it, I did everything right, I was a good partner — but taking responsibility too, not just looking for blame in the other person. I know a lot of people who are very successful professionally, who’ve achieved everything you can achieve professionally, and yet they’ve stumbled in their partnership and ask themselves, how could my partner leave, I did everything expected of me, I was successful, I provided for my family, I climbed the career ladder. But maybe the partner’s answer would be, well, I was missing some closeness with you, I was missing some time with you — and taking responsibility for my own actions would then influence me, in that situation, to ask, do I want to end up in that kind of situation again, or do I reflect, we’ve touched on this before, on why I’m in the situation I’m in now. Usually it’s not a coincidence — usually I’ve also played my own part in ending up in the situation I currently find myself in.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

Let me add to that — first with a Wikipedia definition, just to pick up the keywords in it, and then I’ll say a few words myself, and then let’s see what we can gather and how we can connect it all. On Wikipedia, under “self-responsibility”… I suspect there might be a technical issue, since this is unusual otherwise.

The technical issue is, when you click the mic icon and it just doesn’t turn on.

We’ve had that a few times now. I think I need to pay closer attention that it’s actually turned on when I tap it, otherwise I’m speaking and you’re all waiting and I don’t even notice you can’t hear me yet. Thanks for flagging that.

What I said, and I’ll gladly repeat it, is that for completeness I’d like to pick up a Wikipedia definition of self-responsibility, and then another one where I’d noted a few of my own thoughts, and then let’s see what other terms are hiding in there and how we can connect the different threads. So on Wikipedia, if I search self-responsibility, “own responsibility” comes up first, and it says: own responsibility, or self-responsibility, refers to a person’s willingness and duty to take responsibility for their own actions and omissions. This means standing behind what you do and don’t do, and bearing the consequences, for instance in the form of sanctions. That’s the Wikipedia definition. I’d also jotted down a few keywords of my own, really just as bullet points — taking responsibility for yourself, then I had “conscious handling of emotions,” establishing a balance, things like knowing and respecting your own limits, taking time out, not assigning blame, then accepting the current situation as it is, neither making it better nor worse than it actually is, and then, of course, becoming active again — what can I do, what’s within my sphere of influence? And here again, that term “sphere of influence.” I’m curious now — would you like to pick up on any of these terms?

That’s exactly how I approached it too, and my first thought, since I find it interesting to answer these rooms from different perspectives, is that the word “duty” bothered me — because if someone says, I have a duty, or I have to, I don’t have to do anything, I automatically bear the consequences, but I don’t “have to” do anything, and I don’t have a duty to anything either. I bear the consequences, whether I like it or not, and the question this definition raised for me — this is theory, this is textbook — every person has responsibility for their own actions. And then I ask myself, and this is the interesting context here, is that actually true? In the textbook, yes. In politics and in companies, I observe something different, though we don’t need to get into the corporate side right now. I’ve met plenty of people who made bad decisions as entrepreneurs, who received millions in severance, who never took responsibility — and there we’re back at the topic of morality. I see it in politics too, when people talk about events that were clearly foreseeable, that you could see coming for a long time, and can explain why things are the way they are, but still shift the responsibility elsewhere. So it’s a genuinely interesting question — textbook says yes, we always take responsibility for ourselves, but in practice it’s often handled quite differently, which would then be more about the strategic environment behind why people go one way or another, or express themselves the way they do — but in practice it just doesn’t work that way. In the textbook, at least, I’ll underline that.

Wonderful, thank you so much. What I find fascinating is that you brought up companies and politicians there — especially with terms like duty and so on, is it really true that we never “have to,” or are there contexts where it genuinely is a “must”? I asked myself that too, and immediately thought, it depends — especially when we talk about sanctions, there are different forms of sanctions, it can be societal, it can be legally regulated, and then there’s the individual sphere. On the individual level, you could maybe say, no, I don’t necessarily have to take responsibility. On the societal level, there might be a sanction that isn’t even written down anywhere, more on that moral level, and that gets handled very differently depending on whether something is considered morally reprehensible by society or not, or whether it’s forgiven, in quotation marks. And then there’s the legal level too — whether it constitutes a criminal offence, for example. Just as an example, if I committed murder, that’s also an action. Then, even if I don’t show willingness, in quotation marks, at least in the form of a sanction I’d have to take on responsibility — meaning that taking on responsibility would essentially get imposed on me from outside, even if I don’t bring the willingness to take it on myself.

Would you like to follow up on that too?

Yes, I’d love to share my personal experience as an entrepreneur, and I observe this in politics too — why people, let’s say, turn away. I think, if someone has clearly defined their own morals and ethics for themselves, acts according to those morals and ethics, and can explain that, and takes responsibility even when they’ve acted wrongly, that tends to be forgiven, because we’re all human. I’ve had the experience that, often, even someone with a completely different position than mine will say, I can understand that. They show me they’ve understood me. They show remorse, or agreement. They show they’ve accepted it, and then you’re on a completely different level than when you’re standing opposite each other with finger-pointing, I don’t accept that, it’s someone else’s fault, deflecting all blame. That’s also a personal thing everyone has to work out for themselves, how they want to live it, and I’ve found it’s sometimes hard to admit mistakes — but I don’t make mistakes on purpose, I don’t consciously want to upset someone, or consciously want things to go wrong as an entrepreneur. And you see this again, since today’s topic is responsibility, acting and responsibility — if the other person feels the outcome that resulted isn’t in their interest, but you consider together, and if I turn out to be the triggering factor for that outcome, that I take responsibility, to look together at how such a result doesn’t happen again, then you have a willingness to keep talking — but these are just my personal experiences. Unfortunately, I observe, in the entrepreneurial world as well as the political world, and the world of partnerships too, that people tend to occupy themselves far too much, for instance after a separation, with why did my partner leave, how could that be, I just don’t understand it, it’s impossible — dwelling on that question for weeks, rather than doing an honest stocktaking to move into acting. It’s really hard to act with hurt feelings in any situation and realign your life — but as I said at the start, taking responsibility for your own actions basically means, in some way, we’re also a little responsible for the fact that the situation we’re in, privately or professionally, was actually foreseeable, and we didn’t act. Even a termination I might feel was unfair could perhaps have been foreseen — you wrote a wonderful book, which I’d recommend to everyone, about crisis, that some crises can be seen coming, but I also tend to close my eyes sometimes, hoping the crisis just won’t happen after all. Sometimes we already have a feeling our partner might leave, we feel it in our gut; sometimes I’ve already had the feeling I might lose my job because the company isn’t well positioned, not because it’s about me personally — and then I don’t move into acting, and in the end we’re back at the question, realising I didn’t take responsibility for my own actions, and then of course having to live with the result as it presents itself today, right now.

Wonderful, and now we’re directly at the aspect of emotions and feelings — and what you just described, maybe I saw it coming but don’t do anything, that ultimately also has to do with a protective function, something like pain avoidance, for instance, which is a classic protective mechanism, and then hoping it’ll somehow work out, that you’re mistaken, so you don’t actually look at it closely. But that also means, in the other examples you brought up, there’s always this element of judgment coming through too, and with judgment we’re immediately back at the emotions running in the background, that lead me, against the backdrop of certain experiences or moral aspects, belief systems, unconscious bias, however I’ve stored things — to perceive certain events, something that happens externally for instance, in a certain way and enter into judgment, but on an emotional track, and based on that, a decision gets made, consciously or unconsciously, do I act now or not, do I address something or not, whatever the context — but at least acting results as a consequence, or an omission, and there we’re back at “you cannot not act.”

Is that even possible? But we’d established that if we don’t act, that omission itself represents a form of acting, because we’re generally, in quotation marks, dodging into another form of acting, and so we’re back at acting again. Then you also raised this aspect of analysis, which fits with what I said earlier about the current situation — looking to genuinely accept the current situation as it is, neither making it better nor worse, trying to take the emotions or the judgment out of it beforehand. And that’s not always easy to manage, especially when we’re triggered by something rooted deep in our brain, positive or negative experiences we’ve had — and it’s worth not losing sight of the positive ones either, something like making a purchase decision, for instance — buying something also involves acting, and the emotion behind it might be joy, and we might buy too quickly because of it, or something similar, because we’re simply reacting and acting from that impulse. And accordingly, even that positive emotional colouring, in quotation marks, isn’t necessarily always positive either — worth underlining and making clear. And then, afterward, it’s worth checking whether reflection happens — we’ve talked about behaviour patterns before, meaning it could also be that taking self-responsibility means stepping into reflection afterward, to take the acting that was maybe triggered unconsciously, that happened as a reaction, and through reflection and analysis, either make corrections, make adjustments, or draw a lesson learned for next time. And that essentially creates a kind of cycle, looked at from that perspective.

Would you like to follow up on that?

Gladly, first with three words — that was the biggest lesson I’ve learned for myself, about the processes that are always happening in my life: understanding, first understanding, and understanding means first realising what’s actually happening; then accepting, which is the absolute hardest part, accepting things I really don’t like — the wish is always there to restore the old state, which is why we humans spend so much energy answering the question of why something is the way it is, which does matter afterward too. And understanding, for me, doesn’t mean understanding in the sense of agreement, but first understanding, then asking yourself, what new path do I want to take in my current situation. Sometimes you can’t go back — the biggest wish, especially after a separation, is often wanting the old state back, the old job back, the old circumstances back, because that’s naturally the most comfortable, since it’s familiar. Another example I can share as an entrepreneur, that I observe too, is bosses who were genuinely, incredibly understanding with their employees, gave them time off whenever they needed it, even though they hadn’t gotten a raise — and these bosses are still disappointed when that employee turns away, leaves, and says, I don’t understand it, I was such a great boss, nobody could say anything about me, and yet people still leave companies, or people close to us don’t behave the way we’d wish — and the hard part is still looking in the mirror yourself and saying, and I’d underline this, what path do I want to take. It’s not about whether what I did up to this point was right or wrong, but accepting the current situation, I’m standing where I’m standing today, and then questioning, was the path I took the right one, checking it against my values and morals — do I want to take that path again, that can also be a decision, because I don’t want to deviate from my morals, my ethics, my way of acting, because that’s absolutely rock solid for me, I won’t budge there. Or I ask myself, where do I want to go, how do I get there, do I take a different path now — that would all tie into reflection, which we’ve already discussed. And when you make a new decision, being aware of the consequences of your actions — and I’ve found this in my own life — when I’m aware of the full weight of the consequences of my actions, then, above all, that new path no longer scares me, because the new direction becomes clear once you’re actually walking it.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And given how much we’ve valued picking up genuinely concrete examples, I’d like to actually walk through one concrete example together. You’ve already brought in examples, but they were more sequential, so to speak, one for this, one for that. Let’s take the Deep Talk Club itself as an example. We had the situation where the Deep Talk Club, on Clubhouse, experienced an externally imposed change through an update — and if we look at this now in terms of acting and self-responsibility, responsibility and self-responsibility, what does that mean in this case, how did we actually go about it? Maybe we can reflect on that together a little, to see where all these terms we’ve picked up here fit in — what actually happened, what was the first impulse when the update came, and so on. I’ll pass it to you first.

Really fascinating, glad you brought that up. It went through my head too — I had all sorts of emotionally driven reactions when you said we’re moving to X, or the Twitter format. The first thing that came to mind was Elon Musk, of course, like for everyone. I’ve read his biography, I respect him as an entrepreneur, though I’m not necessarily on board with everything about him as a person, and my mind was racing. It wasn’t my own thought process, but I could imagine, I could understand, people saying, what’s she doing? Now she’s going to X, Elon Musk, that doesn’t work at all, and there’s even talk in Europe of blocking X, I don’t understand that. That’s something I can’t understand at all. And I found myself suddenly caught up again in, why is she doing this? Taking responsibility for the question means, not simply accepting it — that’s exactly the point where, having understood, because you announced what you’re doing, I then accepted it and said, it doesn’t actually matter why she’s doing it, and it doesn’t matter at all what kind of person Elon Musk is either — what mattered for me was something else entirely.

What’s in it for me, does our conversation bring me value, do the people in this room bring me value — yes, they do. Can I take responsibility for being seen in a room like this? Yes, I’m not breaking any law. Any client I work with can see that I’m talking with you all today, that’s not damaging to my business in any way, nothing happens because of that, and since nothing happens, I just have to decide for myself, do I still see an advantage in it, is the information I share with you, and get from you, a genuine, genuine added value for my life, for my personal situation, both privately and professionally. The information doesn’t change, because the people don’t change in that regard, and I value you a great deal, regardless of which platform you’re on, that was decisive for me, and I decided, specifically for the Deep Talk Club, I want to stay. The platform doesn’t matter to me — what mattered was whether X would work on my phone, my mobile, since I’m often out and about and want to listen in and contribute, and once I saw that worked without any problems on a phone, that was the precondition for me — I thought, okay, it would be a real challenge for me if I were tied to a PC, since a PC is a workstation I don’t sit at every day, and this ability to flexibly join you from my phone wherever I am was actually one of the most decisive aspects for me — I noticed no real difference in speaking, regardless of the platform, and the content is still just as good, so it was the right action, and the right decision, for me to keep exchanging with you all here.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Let me step back a few steps here too, which might also make clear that this process, acting and responsibility, or self-responsibility, plays out in a circular way across various points, even within one example, with these cycles happening again and again. If we recall, we were surprised, essentially overnight, when Clubhouse rolled out this huge update where the Main Hall disappeared, along with a lot of other features. Whether those features were good or bad is somewhat beside the point — what mattered was that the Main Hall disappeared, and that had consequences. And that led us to look closer, but even before that happened, I’d mentioned that in the background we’d already been testing other platforms occasionally, to see what alternatives exist — not making ourselves dependent on one single platform. The idea was born on Clubhouse, founding this club and making this kind of reflection space possible in this particular way, but not dependent on Clubhouse, meaning it’s not like, if we use this platform then the Deep Talk Club exists, and if we can’t use the platform anymore, the Deep Talk Club stops existing. And having that foresight to already try other things — that was the first step. The second was, there had been various updates before, but those just led us to look, okay, what features are these, can we use them or not, and this last update was just so drastic, so big, that it had real consequences for the club as a whole, so we first looked at, what’s the current situation. The current situation was, there was a huge update and a change with real consequences, essentially something we as a club couldn’t accept as it was, and then, without making it better or worse than it was, not out of a “I just don’t feel like changing” mindset, but really looking at it neutrally and assessing the situation, to then consider what that means in consequence. So possible ways of handling it could also have been simply accepting it, or complaining, or whatever, that’s certainly one way of handling it too, but it’s not particularly productive — you can vent for a bit, but what happens after that? So in the meantime I’d also given Clubhouse feedback, because with the update they’d actually explicitly asked, along the lines of, some things might get expanded further, or we welcome feedback on how you’re getting on, or if anything that seemed important got dropped, please let us know. So I took the time to send a message. I didn’t find the response particularly satisfying, though I’d still call it positive that they responded at all — they pointed to the FAQs, which I’d already read of course, and said they’d definitely pass it on so it could be discussed internally. But that’s probably a fairly standard response, since at that point they can’t say what will happen with it either way. Now, you could of course say, okay, let’s just wait and see if they reverse it or if it stays. But then you’re back in that dependency again, since we’re at that term, sphere of influence. What can I influence? I can influence giving them feedback. I can influence whether I switch platforms or not. But I can’t influence whether the platform’s creators decide to make another change or not. And now I could passively wait, keep being annoyed about it, just accept it in the end, or decide again to move into activity. And that’s partly where responsibility and self-responsibility come in — deciding, evaluating, against the backdrop I’ve described, is this acceptable or not. And if it’s not acceptable, then looking at alternatives, which is what happened next, to then, weighing various considerations, make new decisions again. And here we quite deliberately and purposefully built in a transition phase. We’d already made it fairly clear, in our thousandth episode I believe, where I’d already flagged a clear tendency toward X Spaces. So a tendency had already been identified and made transparent beforehand, but with the note, let’s take this as a transition period, test it out a bit before making a final decision, so we don’t end up having to reverse this or that later. Which means considering what the possible effects might be — one effect would be, if you realise, no, this isn’t it after all, switching again, or similar, and it’s probably better to have a certain transition phase. And what you described, whether I’m at a computer or not, for instance, those were exactly the kinds of considerations happening in the background too — genuinely, when assessing and evaluating platforms, not just I like this or I don’t, but finding something comparable that reflects that same simplicity, similar to Clubhouse, where you can go straight in through an app, that it’s not overly complicated, that you have similar functionality, and that it’s not suddenly more challenging or difficult. That maybe you don’t necessarily need to download the app — which is the case with X too, for instance. Meaning, theoretically, you can listen in even without having downloaded the app, we touched on that briefly too, though then you can’t participate, you can’t raise your hand to join the conversation. And weighing all these considerations, then running the test phase — first we did one day, well, one episode, 60 minutes. And after that test, or 90 minutes actually, since it fell on a Sunday, we did a review toward the end, found it had actually been a pretty positive experience, and out of that reflection and review, we turned it into a week-long test phase, already flagging that we’d reflect and review again exactly a week later, went through that loop again, and only then made the decision. So we kept having some incident, or some context we found ourselves in, and out of that context, observing, reflecting, making decisions again and again, and then checking those decisions again. And the decisions don’t always have to be final decisions right away — something like, let’s first do a test episode, then a one-week trial run, and only then the final decision, where we even said, this could theoretically be revised or adjusted again, if something comes up in the future that makes that necessary.

Would you like to come in here too?

Yes, I can underline everything you just said. My own train of thought was similar — I’d never engaged with Twitter and wouldn’t have gone on Twitter, not because I had any prior negative experience, but simply because I’d decided for myself, there are so many apps, you don’t have to join every one, I only want to spend a certain amount of time a day on social media, and whatever new thing comes along, I don’t add anything new to my plate right away. Now the challenge was that I value you all a lot and didn’t want to lose contact with you, wanted and still want that, and that’s where the openness comes in — my thinking on it changed, suddenly I wasn’t thinking about whether I wanted to use Twitter or not, but what’s in it for me, what’s most important — I don’t want to lose contact, so I’ll use Twitter. That was suddenly answered very quickly. I wouldn’t have had any reason to use Twitter otherwise, because what I already had and knew was enough for me. And as an entrepreneur, I can really understand everything you said about why you decided on X, sorry, that’s what it’s called now — because as an entrepreneur you also just have to look at how much money is invested somewhere, and if someone has a lot of money invested, whether in a company or software or wherever, and it’s their own money, then the purely self-interested motivation to keep developing and pushing that thing forward is very, very high, and that platform or that idea will keep developing further. And sometimes you can’t even answer the question of what’s “better” — I remember, and maybe some people here remember too, videotapes; I was someone who was thrilled there was a video recorder, I could record shows as a kid to watch later, since I had to go to bed and so on, and back then, and any technician will confirm this, the Betamax system was the best video system out there, TV stations used it too, I believe — but Betamax didn’t win out, VHS did, simply because, among other reasons, the Chinese market flooded it and so on, there were a lot of reasons, and the best system doesn’t always win. But as a consumer, or as a user, I always look, when I use something, PC, software, where do I have the best chance of working with this system for as long as possible.

Thank you so much, and what I find genuinely fascinating too is that second part you raised earlier — when you first heard about it, that brief moment of thinking it over, this “I probably wouldn’t have used X” — but here’s the important part, and here we’re back at, how do I assess this, how do I judge it, what’s in it for me, what’s the benefit for me, and against that backdrop saying, the club matters to me, the people matter to me, the topics matter to me, so I want to keep taking the opportunity to be part of it and step into the exchange, and against that backdrop, not putting the platform itself, or which platform it’s on, front and centre, but the actual question, what does it bring me, what use is it to me, and do I want to keep being part of it or not. And I find that fascinating too, because it’s a similar question, similarly framed, to the thought I raised earlier about not making ourselves dependent on the platform — it might be that the frame and the space were created on one platform, or in the context of one platform, but against the backdrop of everything that’s grown out of it, and how we’ve shaped it, and the value it brings all of us, then asking, what’s in it for me, and do I want to continue this or not, and finding solutions accordingly.

Interesting parallel there too, isn’t it?

Genuinely interesting, and a question I still couldn’t fully answer for myself — you’re putting me, or Elon’s putting me, in front of one of the bigger challenges here. I set my feelings about Elon aside and simply said, if I asked you all what matters to you, it would be freedom of speech, and X is a platform built around freedom of speech — freedom of speech is the most important value for me, and I reflected on this over the weekend: in Germany, we have freedom of speech, but if you look closer, we don’t have unlimited freedom of speech when it comes to incitement or mass hatred and so on, there are limits set on it, and that’s occupying my own value system right now — that freedom of speech, no matter what I say, matters greatly to me. Which means I also have to acknowledge that people like Trump, or others, get to state their opinion, even if it doesn’t match the truth, even if it serves to spread misinformation — that’s also freedom of speech. And that line between freedom of speech, presenting facts, which is what a journalist does, and using freedom of speech to steer people toward acting in a certain direction, to instrumentalise them for self-interested purposes, political or otherwise, remains, for me, a genuinely fascinating question that’s going to keep occupying us in this century. I picked up a really interesting quote from a journalist that I wrote down, about what’s different today from before: because of the media we have now, social media, whether Instagram or TikTok and so on, we have to learn to say goodbye to secured truths. Those secured truths won’t exist anymore, because with new technology, AI, and what’s coming, we’re going to see films and hear voices, and we’ll have to learn new techniques. Questioning things could mean, even what you or our friend say here, the way I’ve come to know him, even if I hear him say it myself, even if I see him in a video, that’s a kind of new education that’s now being practised in schools too — media literacy and media education, this questioning and asking, because what we’ll see and hear in the future won’t correspond to secured truths anymore. And that’s new, and a real challenge for me, for the new century, or the coming years, that we’re living through together.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And I’d already announced yesterday that there’s another level I’d like to look at with you all. But to limit the complexity, I kept it focused on certain aspects yesterday when setting that impulse, and there are a few more rooms coming this week that I’d like to use to build toward that level, so we can step into the exchange and build the corresponding bridges. And the aspect you just raised, we’ll definitely discuss and deepen together this coming Sunday at 8. I’ll set various impulses there too, to step into exchange with you and reflect on it together. And in preparation for that, we have a few more rooms coming up in the next few days. Today we’re looking at acting and self-responsibility, tomorrow we continue with acting and sustainability — we want to look at what sustainability means in connection with acting. Then Wednesday we’ll deepen acting and innovation — how does acting foster innovation and progress, and we’d already drawn a distinction between innovation and progress, not every innovation leads to progress. What actually is progress, and how does that connect to acting, to build a bridge toward acting and learning, and acting and education. And through that thread we’ll also look at acting through non-action, so that by next Sunday we can pick up exactly the aspects you just raised. And I think that’ll be a genuinely fascinating dialogue too, against the backdrop of the topics we’ll be covering through to Saturday. And then, looking at what that actually means, and how the landscape is changing right now — you brought up the term technology too, against the backdrop that, for instance, with AI and so on, quite a lot is changing externally. And what does that actually do in relation to things like news, social media, social platforms where we come into exchange? What do we observe, and how do we make sense of it? And what does that mean, on one hand for judgment, and on the other hand for responsibility, self-responsibility, and looking at how we actually handle acting here. I think that’s already a good teaser for what’s ahead — that the possibility Elon Musk has created with his approach here can represent a genuinely valuable opportunity in how we handle this, and I believe it brings a lot of advantages. That doesn’t mean there aren’t disadvantages too, but nonetheless it may well be exactly the framework needed to come into exchange and step back into dialogue. So I’m genuinely, genuinely curious about that.

With an eye on the time, are there other aspects we’ve left out that you’d like to add, or anything similar? Otherwise we can slowly round off today’s room, if you’re happy with that.

No, and I apologise, I’ve noticed I’ve been speaking in very long sentences, because it’s such a complex topic. So I was thinking about what you said at the end — it’s not hard to express complicated things at length and in a complicated way, the real challenge lies in simplifying them. And to summarise your last contribution, I’d say, the word I was actually missing is that we’re going to have to learn a new media literacy going forward — how we handle media and how we judge it. And that’s a big challenge.

Thank you too for that word, competence, because that’s really what it comes down to — developing skills and abilities that bring us back into a state of being able to act, into self-efficacy. And against the backdrop that things are changing technologically, and of course societal changes are happening too, and so on, it genuinely makes sense — and here we’re at the aspect of, what are the future skills we actually need, looked at on this meta level, key qualifications, key competencies that let us live self-determined lives, self-determined understood communally too, in a community, where it’s not just about looking selfishly at your own interests, but a communally conceived self-determination in the sense of self-organisation, self-efficacy, self-shaping. And action competence plays an enormously important role here too, and it can’t be looked at in isolation from other aspects, but precisely in this interplay of change, if I can boil it down to one word — and change is constant, it’s not just for a brief moment, but right now we have a massive speed to it too, through the technological developments happening, that speed is multiplying further, you said it yourself earlier, that we can barely tell anymore what’s fake news or whether something is even true. So we genuinely need a further development, or shaping, of competencies that may have been needed before too, but not in this form, not in the shape we need them today. Especially when we look at things like AI-generated videos or similar, where we sometimes genuinely can’t tell anymore whether something is real or not. And all the more important, then, to develop new competencies and handle information differently, for instance. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at these things at all, but rather that we can navigate this new landscape well, and keep reflecting and questioning, to arrive at good conclusions about whether something is just information, maybe fake news, or something worth researching more deeply, to make sure it’s not something fabricated, so to speak, but something I can actually work with. And these are all areas within future skills, on the meta level, the level of key qualifications, key competencies. I find that genuinely fascinating, and I think X Spaces is actually a wonderful example, or a wonderful framework, to actually try these things out, which is also why I’m not necessarily a fan of having everything regulated from outside and just consuming from there on. Because then we’re not in self-steering anymore either, since someone else decides for us what we’re allowed to see, not allowed to see, how we should judge things and so on. So it’s about coming back into self-empowerment here too.

Wonderful, thank you so much, and to everyone listening too. Let’s move into the closing round then — what’s your highlight for today, what would you like to underline? And then I’ll gladly round off today’s room.

I wouldn’t actually underline anything specific from today. Two words matter to me right now, because they basically fit everything we’re experiencing together at the moment: together, not against each other. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And “together, not against each other” means, for me too, always staying in dialogue, regardless of the different opinions and facets that exist here. And that’s exactly why exchange matters so much — to at least be able to understand each other first, to understand what the other person means, which terms they’re using, and what’s hiding behind them. And that’s why we place so much value on defining terminology first, in the sense of a shared understanding — I mean this, you mean that, okay, we’ve understood each other. And now, how do we handle that, and where’s the consensus, where do we maybe see things differently. And then giving everyone the chance to reflect and evaluate that further afterward, to let it resonate. So I’m looking forward to the coming rooms together too. You’re all very warmly invited to join again — every morning at 8, the Deep Talk Club is now here, from today onward, consistently on X, previously on Clubhouse. And I’m looking forward to it — we’re at episode 1019 today, and I’m genuinely, genuinely curious how much time we get to spend here on X going forward, and in which direction our rooms will keep developing, especially since we might now have quite different listeners, quite different audiences than we had on Clubhouse before. And I’m looking forward to observing and experiencing how our rooms keep evolving. So you’re all very warmly invited, every morning, or whenever you have the time and inclination, to join us at 8am German time.