Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: To what extent can gaining insight actually be consciously steered? That’s the question we explore in Room #827 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” 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 warm good morning. Today we’re talking about conscious control and insight. To what extent can gaining insight actually be consciously steered — that’s the question we want to look at today. And I’m really looking forward to it, and curious what examples and experiences of your own you’ll bring in here, and we’ll get started right away too. Just a quick note again for anyone who might be joining for the first time today — a recording is running in the background, and anyone who joins automatically agrees that it’s being recorded and that this recording will be published too. And we also have three small room rules on top of that: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, to make sure these are genuine contributions and not Clubhouse trolls. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is warmly invited to join in through the chat instead — that’s entirely legitimate too. If someone wants to stay anonymous, or for whatever other reason can’t speak this morning, just use the chat, and I’ll pick up one thing or another accordingly. With that, I’d like to welcome Marc at my side this morning. A very warm good morning, dear Marc. What do you have to say on the topic?
Good morning to the whole round. Dear Yasemin, you gave me a raised pulse there for a moment, because I was sitting in front of my phone before 8, right at 8, thinking, this can’t be true, that I’m not even able to get into a room like this. And now I have the insight and the awareness again that it wasn’t actually me — it was, once again, the technology. Thank you, and good morning.
Wonderful, good morning. Yes, that’s how it goes sometimes, that it’s the technology’s fault, that there are delays here and there. And because you don’t know exactly what’s causing it, you first think, maybe it’s my own connection, or my own phone, or maybe I just can’t find it right now, or whatever. And, well, it caused a raised pulse — that’s actually a nice keyword to start with. And we could look at this here too — conscious control, so to speak, to what extent can that actually be consciously steered? Can you consciously steer arriving at an insight? Or how do you deal with it? That’s another question we could put out there too. And I see we have another hand raised. Let me bring Layla in too. Marc, would you like to add something, or shall we bring Layla in first? Layla first, gladly. Good morning, Layla.
Good morning, Layla. A very warm good morning. You’ll have to tell me in a second how my audio is, because I have my scarf on, and whenever I have it on, it crackles. Crackles? A little bit, yes. A little bit. Then let’s fix that. Okay, it should be better now. Much better, yes. See, and I didn’t fall into stress over it. And that’s actually quite nice, because that was a conscious decision. First of all, I’d like to wish everyone Eid Mubarak today, because today is the Islamic Christmas, so to speak. I can only wish you in Turkish, Yasemin — the informal form, I think — “Bayramın mübarek olsun.” Yes, because I thought I’d do that now, because I find it really lovely. And back to the scarf, and back to Marc. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that you have feelings in that moment, and that when you go into conscious control, that means these automated processes — and I was just thinking about this, we’ve talked about it before — you tend to fall back into original patterns in stressful situations, or when you get emotional. And if I fall back into original patterns — I have to mention the book “Games People Play” again, which I’m really listening to very slowly, I have to say, and very consciously — then you’re in different ego states, I think, either in this parent-ego or this child-ego, where you fall back on patterns of behaviour, to put it generally, that are automated, that you know. Which is actually really helpful in situations like that, because these patterns mean I don’t have to think for long. The problem, I think, is that it’s then no longer a conscious decision, but an automated one. And whether an insight can actually be gained from that decision — I think it was once said that life is lived forwards but understood backwards. Insights, I don’t know if they’re always generated in the moment a situation happens. And still, I think that if I’m being led by strong feelings, or if I’m in acute situations where automated processes run, I think I fall back on these patterns, and so I don’t necessarily make a conscious decision under those circumstances, and that’s why gaining insight can only happen afterward, in retrospect, or there’s no thinking involved at all, and so no conscious decision gets made. And that’s why, well, I don’t know whether an insight can be generated there. I’m curious what you think about that.
Thank you, thank you so much. So with the example you just brought up, especially with the book, and how you described it, it does at least seem to work in this order — that if I’ve gained an insight, for example, I can then quite consciously move into conscious control too. And so the question now would be whether it might also work the other way round. And I’d like to give Marc the chance here too, especially since, dear Marc, you wanted to add something earlier too, and we brought Layla in first. So if you had a thought you’d still like to bring in, please go ahead too.
Thank you so much — yes, I had a thought, and it’s this: you have the magic word right there as the title, “awareness.” And we carry a computer around with us the whole time, and it occurred to me, unfortunately far too late, that I was taught in school that we have a computer, and that it’s there. But it really makes sense, it’s really good, to become aware of how this computer we carry around constantly actually works. And if we understand these processes that take place in the brain, we arrive at completely new insights. But for that, I first have to bring it into my awareness. And also accept that the brain is a muscle, one that can be trained — we’ve had that a few times before too. And the insight I then had was that in our lives we always see what we’re fixated on. We already had the example that if we want to buy a white car, then suddenly on the motorway we only see white or black cars. And once we know this doesn’t just apply to cars, but to everything — is my brain simply fixated in a way that means I’ve just always had bad luck, or good luck? Why do other people have it better, or me worse? That’s a programming, and I can very much arrive at a different insight there, but only if I know how the processes in my brain actually run. And I don’t think that has anything to do with intelligence or talent or anything else. It’s really just the magic word that someone tells you — a lot lies in the subconscious. But you have the ability to call it into consciousness, re-evaluate it, and through that give your life a completely new direction.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much. That means, in reverse, so to speak, being able to generate an insight precisely by making different things conscious. And the moment I’ve gained an insight, then it’s, in quotation marks, again a conscious decision whether I want to counteract it, whether I want to handle it differently, or how I want to deal with it, and to use corresponding strategies, techniques, tactics or whatever, in order to arrive at pattern-breaking, or something similar, for example. Do you have any further examples that come to mind? Layla, go ahead.
I wanted to briefly add something, because Marc put it really nicely, and I recently saw a really good programme on Arte about this. That’s what you learn in school, and it’s a bit like this black-box kind of thinking. Some people say you have to think outside the box; in school, I was taught to think inside the box, to put it a bit pointedly. And you kind of imagine it as a black box. In this programme, it was said that psychology shows us our deficits, and neuroscience shows us — so, given that we now have this way of thinking — neuroscience shows us how we can eliminate these deficits, so to speak, or how we can deal with them. The real question is whether a brain actually functions like a computer. In this programme, that was disputed, with pretty good arguments, I thought. They showed an MRI scan and said, well, it’s said that this area of the brain lights up at a certain point in time, but in principle the brain is working constantly, all the areas are active. And what’s shown is really just that there’s more energy here, more blood or whatever is being directed there, so there’s simply more going on here. But fundamentally it’s not the case that the other area isn’t working at all in the meantime — it’s more like a network, I think you could imagine it, where everything is active. The question is, we always try to understand it that way. And I do think it’s good to consciously steer things. But maybe — I found this point really important — maybe we should move away a little from seeing ourselves as a computer. And this conscious steering certainly works, but we’re a very complex system. It’s not input-output through a black box — I think we’re simply more than that, I once heard, and still, I do believe you can consciously steer things. For example, someone once told me — he’d had a heart attack, really terrible — and he told me, and then I very consciously controlled my breathing in that moment, because he’d become quite panicked. And he’d been told — because there are techniques for this — he’d once learned belly breathing, and then he did belly breathing. And that sounds completely crazy now, but still, it meant the heart attack wasn’t as bad, because he was able to counteract it, he was able to act, because he didn’t fall into panic. And I think neuroscience is more than justified in our society too. And still, I don’t think it’s the solution to our deficits, but rather that we should understand the complex system itself, and see ourselves less as a computer. I hope I haven’t strayed too far from the topic, and managed to bring my points across properly.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And, well, there are several sides to this too. On the one hand, we naturally tend to want to reduce complexity, in quotation marks, by translating things into images. Whether that’s the comparison with a computer or other examples, you can think for yourself about what fits well for you. Basically, you’re completely right that the brain is simply a very, very complex construct. And we can observe this in many places too, whether that’s companies that like to buy in certain methods and would love the promise that if we do A, then we know B will come out, and so on. And we see in so many, many places that the topics and systems are far too complex to break down that linearly, in quotation marks. And at the same time, of course, it helps us to think in images and to convey things in images, in order to have a comparison or an idea for ourselves. And I think that’s actually legitimate and fine, because it helps me build bridges, so to speak. As long as, provided I don’t forget in the process just how complex the brain actually is, de facto, at the end of the day. Marc, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, I find it really fascinating how words influence a discussion or a dialogue. We’re getting hung up on the word “computer” now, and I find that fascinating precisely because I chose that term deliberately to create images, and now I’ll choose a different term. Whether it’s a computer or has something to do with a computer doesn’t actually matter at all. Let me use a different phrasing now — the thing we carry under our hair, on top of our head, has a big influence on us. We can call that a computer, control centre, command centre, captain, command deck — it’s completely irrelevant to me. But if we accept that what we have under our hair has a big influence on our lives, then I’d stand by everything that’s been said, and I find it really interesting to observe how we fixate on words, and how discussions of every kind suddenly veer off in a completely different direction because of that. And I’ve tried to learn, for myself, to accept a statement without getting hung up on the specific word — I hope I can explain that properly, not getting hung up on individual words, but rather, just as you formulated it together just now, dear Yasemin, of course our brain is a very complex apparatus that also works while we’re dreaming and while we’re sleeping, so even when it’s switched off. I can switch off a computer, but not the brain. And thanks for the discussion — really fascinating to observe.
Yes, really fascinating, to build that bridge here too, so to speak, and to ask, what actually just happened, and to what extent can gaining insight be consciously steered? That might even mean taking this reflection to a meta level, in a sense, to actually find answers to this question. And while you might still be thinking about that for a moment and can add to it again in a bit, I’d like to warmly welcome Jürgen to the round this morning first. A very warm good morning, dear Jürgen.
Yes, a very warm good morning to you all, after a long time again. I deliberately focused more on listening this week, because the topic of insight has passed by me over the past weeks, so I could get a feel and an insight into what status you’re all at. And I was certainly triggered by one topic or another, empathy for example, but I deliberately focused on listening. Now, what was, or is, the initial premise here was Marc’s statement. Dear Marc, I’ll take the counter-position — you said you don’t want to get too fixated on terms. I’m now going to deliberately fixate purely on the terminology in the header, the title of today’s session. It actually consists of three terms: awareness on the one hand, insight on the other, and steering. And setting aside for a moment the question of whether this steering is one-directional or two-directional — I’ll come back to that briefly — I’d like to briefly share my understanding, and please correct me, of what awareness and insight mean to me. Let me establish this first, because I believe, and you probably know this too, that professional clarity prevents moving targets, and keeps a discussion from running off the rails. And I’ll start with the first one, insight. This has been the overarching theme for weeks now. We once talked about what the essential difference is between insight and knowledge. And if I remember correctly, and go by my notes, then I noted for myself, and I stand by this, that pure accumulation of knowledge, this pure accumulation of knowledge, differs from insight, because insight is characterised by a conviction about a truth I’ve defined for myself, one that I can justify at any time, for which I always have a reason why I arrived at this insight. And that’s the essential difference for me — to put it briefly, that I fundamentally experience a state of knowledge, a piece of information, a data point, a behavioural imprint, as true and justified for myself, in particular. And on the other hand we have awareness. And here the question arises for me, which awareness, which dimension are we talking about? Because I can become aware both of myself, along the lines of “know thyself,” but also aware of the environment I move within. To not make this too long, I’ll now combine these three terms and say, my navigating, my positioning of myself in relation to myself and to the environment I move within — this part of awareness — steers, on the one hand, my insight, what I’ve brought with me from my past as insight. On the other hand, this insight also steers my awareness, how I position myself within this environment I move in. All in all, both terms stand, for me, in an inherent, reciprocal relationship to each other, one that requires adaptation. And that’s the bridge for me to adaptation, behavioural adaptation, which connects to tomorrow’s topic, I believe — that’s nothing other than a learning process, a lifelong, ongoing process. Thank you for listening to me again after such a long time.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. Yes, I don’t quite know — there was a hand raised. Who wanted to add something? Layla, go ahead.
Yes, one second. Okay, the door’s shut now. I wanted to address two points. First, on Marc — I don’t know if I’m paraphrasing you correctly, but you said it’s very interesting what that triggers in other people. I automatically had to think of Vera Birkenbihl, and I thought, yes, that’s right, because it always depends on which thread in the network it — and I won’t say “triggers” now, but which thread it picks up, I’d say. Really. I think it’s really important that we always consider which thread this picks up. Why was it like that for me just now? Because I’ve engaged a lot with industrialisation, and whether that’s why we are the way we are. I actually had a discussion about this yesterday too, that we work against our biology nowadays, so to speak, if you look at what a human being’s biological rhythm is like, and then look at the working world. But I also wouldn’t say that it necessarily triggers someone, or that you’re only ever talking about what a topic sets off in someone. I think, simply, as Jürgen put it, that you just have to make sure you’re not talking about different things. In the best case, you’re talking about the same thing, and you first agree on terms, and then you’re understanding about the fact that a different thread gets picked up, and you try, again — I’m not so deeply rooted in needlework that I could put this properly, but I’d say a lovely piece of embroidery emerges, where everyone can work with their own threads. On Jürgen, what I wanted to say was — Jürgen, I’m with you there, in that I think insight is something — we already talked about this, between recognising and insight, and between knowing something and gaining an insight about it, there’s a big difference for me personally. And what I keep noticing, and I found it lovely what Yasemin once said, is that we then say, well, that’s just how it is. And that you describe yourself as somewhat fluid. You also once said that phrase, Jürgen — you never step into the same river twice. Because something changes. And that’s why insight, for me, is something I can hold onto, something that’s stable for me — insight, in fact, is not crystalline. That’s how I’d put it. And I now have to quote a big German rapper, Shirin David, who did advertising for McDonald’s, and I found that really funny, because she got pinned down on it — she used to live vegan, and it was also about the climate, and then she sold her car, and afterward it turned out that she’s now bought herself an SUV again, I believe. And she doesn’t comment on things like that very often, but then wrote something I found really interesting. She wrote, “Times change, times change you.” And you’ll notice I’ve now taken a completely different thread, quoting a German rapper, because I’m a teacher and I’m very interested — I don’t know, I already listened to this kind of thing when I was young. And I have a lot to do with young people. I always try, a bit — well, I don’t know, I’m just interested in that kind of thing, that’s why I pick up different threads. But I find that sentence so great. Times change, times change you. You never step into the same river twice — it’s actually similar. And now the question is, does that make you fickle, or do you simply gain new insights? Are you allowed to change insights too? That’s the question that came up for me.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. What do the others say about that, Marc, Jürgen?
Yes, I’d like to respond to both contributions. First of all, thank you so much, dear Jürgen — I can underline everything you said. And you mentioned, among other things, that life means lifelong learning. And the room title is conscious control. And control, for me, is something active. If I don’t steer, there’s still steering happening — then I’m being steered passively instead. And the question is simply, and that’s what I meant by this conscious control, do people even have the desire to want to learn at all? Do people even have the desire to gain a new insight? A lot of people are content with their lives and say, I’m good the way I am, why should I change? I do everything perfectly in my relationship, why should I change? I’m the best boss in the world, why should I change? And since the room title is conscious control, I’d say the desire to actually take over this steering has to come from us. And to learn and understand these mechanisms, it makes sense to engage with what we have under our hair. The term doesn’t matter to me here — it’s simply about accepting that we can have an active influence there. That means steering. There are various ways to steer — with your hands, with your feet, maybe even telepathically, I don’t know, just to use images again. But this idea that we all actively learn throughout life — for that too, I have to consciously decide. And I observe a lot of people in my environment who have no desire to actively learn. In the sense of, I don’t even want a new insight, because the world I’m currently moving in, I feel comfortable there. And sometimes people are afraid, or apprehensive, of entering new worlds. Better to stay in the old world — I know my way around there, I know what’s coming. And that’s why I think, to come back to the room title, yes, this conscious control is the first step, saying, this is possible. And then understanding the mechanisms, and then learning the technique of how we can actively steer, and what possibilities for steering are even available to us.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Jürgen, would you like to add something directly here too?
Yes, in one respect at least, because for me steering always means an expression of active action too. Even holding onto a position — and I’m speaking here from a very recent experience — when a person says, I don’t want to change anymore, I basically don’t want to learn anymore, then, in my view, this person is still steering, namely they’re steering toward holding on. And holding on is fundamentally also a doing, one that has an effect. And the level of insight about this itself is, very probably — let me stick my neck out here — largely unconscious, that not wanting to move anymore — I’ll repeat myself — not wanting to move anymore, which at the same time also means not wanting to change and learn anymore, is an active steering of behaviour, namely a remaining in the status quo, for the simple reason that — and this is the sphere I spoke of earlier, that exists alongside us, namely our environment — this environment is changing. And if I hold onto my position in a moving target, in a changing environment, then I change unnoticed, because I’m constantly having to position myself in a new environment, in relation to my status. That’s what I wanted to add. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And I think this makes it very, very clear once again what role, or what significance, this awareness ultimately has here too. That means basically both holding on and changing are, ultimately, an active decision, an active act, so to speak, although there isn’t necessarily always a concrete awareness of the action present or dominant, so to speak. And so this also sharpens the point about what role this conscious way of dealing with things can ultimately have an influence on, for example on making different decisions, or maybe on holding onto a decision too. So that too might be a conscious decision, but the difference is whether it happens consciously or unconsciously. Layla, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, and I wanted to add — Marc, I really had to smile when you said that, because there’s this “be yourself” thing, and then you always get cards like that for your birthday: “Stay just the way you are.” I once wrote a birthday card for someone I know is very interested in personal development — or actually it was an Instagram message — and I wrote, “Please, whatever you do, don’t stay the way you are, keep developing yourself.” He laughed a lot and replied right away too. What I noticed there is just this… I actually just got a message too, and I noticed, through that sentence, that when a philosopher tells us you never step into the same river twice, that’s something different than when Shirin David, who used to be vegan — and greetings go out to Shirin David, this isn’t meant confrontationally at all — but when someone says, times change, times change you, then we immediately go, yeah, but she made that statement, didn’t she. But we could apply that to politics too. There are simply people where we say, okay, they have to be reliable in what they say, where we have this authority argument — that’s a bit of the halo effect, that we have these authority-based arguments. The halo effect is when I overly foreground one characteristic of someone, like a white coat or something like that, and then stop seeing other things. And we want a certain reliability from a lot of people, in what they say and in their values too. I once read a book about this that I found really, really lovely. There’s a nice film too — it’s called “Meet the Parents,” and it’s about a son-in-law, and a former agent says, look, this is the circle of trust, and draws a circle. And then he makes a dot, way out on the edge, and says, and that’s you. In this book it was done similarly — they said, well, you should have a circle of dignity. That means there shouldn’t be many values in it, but a few. And you sort of take that and say, okay, and for me this is something that’s maybe crystalline after all. For example — I don’t know — the constitution, human dignity is inviolable, that would be a crystalline statement for me, one I wouldn’t want to change, where I’d say, okay, we still have personal development and so on and so forth, but I wouldn’t go beyond that. If we’re talking about personal values now, well, I don’t know — I’d say I have a pronounced sense of justice, personally. And I don’t make deals about that. And I don’t go beyond that either. There, I’m crystalline. But I’m only crystalline where I myself am concerned. I have developed further in that respect too, because I’ve gained insights there. In the past I was definitely, well, how should I put it, I was probably as hard on myself as you sometimes are toward the outside too. I made very few, if any, compromises there. And I’d say I’m different now, more fluid, when it comes to those compromises. And still, it’s within my circle of dignity. That’s a very conscious decision — that ties back to conscious control, to your topic. I think then you’re also not a flag in the wind. You’re also not, well, why should I care about what I said yesterday. Instead, you can say, I gained an insight there, and I’ve developed further. Because Shirin David got a lot, a huge shitstorm for that, she got written off, to bring in current media again. And still, there are people where we simply expect something crystalline, or expect a certain reliability. But I don’t want to stray too far from the topic.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And regardless of the specific person — we did ultimately establish that insights change too, quite generally. And I think that can vary a lot, really. On the one hand we have values playing into it to some degree. On the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily mean the values themselves have actually changed — to stay with this example, and I don’t want to judge this, and I can’t say anything about the background here either — but just to look at this example from another perspective, so to speak, and stay neutral about it. It could well be that someone did something toward climate action before, and later, through engaging intensively with the topic, realised for themselves that certain things — if I contribute to, say, SUVs being overrated, in quotation marks, and not having as much of an impact as claimed, or as I’d previously had the impression — and accordingly arrived at a different decision for myself, within my own circle, to get an SUV. You can question that, or not, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the person’s values have changed, in the sense that the person isn’t reliable — rather, the question is what the personal motives might have been for making a different decision, or approaching things differently. And if we pick up this aspect — that the insights we hold are, basically, a kind of snapshot, and we discussed this very intensively in one of the rooms — in that, because we have different experiences, gather different information that becomes knowledge and so on, if we look back, and we might be able to observe this in ourselves, if we observe ourselves closely and take a reflective look at it, that what we thought ten years ago, five years ago, three years ago or yesterday isn’t necessarily the same as what we think today. And with that we can think ahead into the future too, and derive conclusions from it. And that too might be an insight, if we do it reflectively — that with high probability, in three months, a year, three years, five years, certain things we hold a position on today will probably change, because we’ve gained new experiences and insights, and so even though the underlying value construct itself doesn’t change, the perspectives underneath it, and the insights, mean that different actions can be derived from them. And so I find that a really important aspect too, and also to handle it carefully, in quotation marks, because we tend to jump very quickly into judgement, right or wrong, black or white, so to speak, and there are actually various facets here that need to be considered too, and sometimes, especially with examples like these, whether from politics or influencers or whatever, where we don’t have full transparency into a lot of things, and it’s accordingly difficult to actually form a judgement. But we tend to jump into that judgement very quickly anyway. And here too, ultimately, we’re back at insight and awareness, or conscious control. That means, ultimately, when it comes to judging certain things — and we’ve talked about this so often before — always making ourselves aware again that emotions play a really big role for us here too, and that we always keep moving into conscious control, so to speak, into reflection, in order to open up various different perspectives. We won’t be able to answer this for that particular person now, but the perspectives we look from, and how quickly or slowly we move into judgement, that’s something we have the possibility to consciously steer here too. Would you like to add to that, Marc, Layla? Go ahead. I don’t know who wants to go first. But, yes, Marc.
And I’d like to add two more words — openness, curiosity, and having fun trying new things. And I just think the main title here is conscious control. If we know how we function, whether that’s our body, our emotions, or our brain — and if we observe ourselves, then we have the possibility to steer our awareness. And I’ve found for myself that this works really well both through self-observation, through asking myself questions, but also through a coach who’s learned to ask the right questions. Because what we want to change, or what we carry deep within us — the fears, the emotions, all of that is already laid down inside us. We just sometimes don’t find it, because we either don’t dare to ask ourselves the brutal questions — why don’t you do this, why aren’t you acting this way now, what are you afraid of. But a coach is paid to ask us uncomfortable questions. And then the following happens for me: I don’t have time to postpone the answer, they wait for an answer. I’m forced to give that answer right away. I think about it on the way home, but there are a lot of things I’ve noticed we postpone for lack of time — I don’t need to think about that right now, I’ll do that when I have time, I’ll do that on holiday, or I’ll do that in the evening — and often nothing happens at all. And having a coach helps me enormously, because in that moment I have to engage with the situation and come up with an answer, one that’s usually already laid down inside me anyway.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much. Layla, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, I wanted to add — I just realised, for one thing, I know very little about cars. I don’t know if it was an SUV or an AMG. And that actually shows us something already — we very often go by ourselves and our own level of knowledge, and then project that onto the other person. That means, for example, if you were to ask me — I’m actually pescatarian, have been since 2019. Why am I pescatarian? For health reasons. I actually like eating meat, except pork — the pigs and I are very good friends, because I always walk past them and greet them. And still, you might assume I do this to protect the climate, or for moral reasons. Well, that all plays a role too, but it’s not the absolute reason. The absolute reason is health — I want to eat anti-inflammatory. But I’m so often in these kinds of discussions. I was at a barbecue once and brought soy schnitzel with me, and then I had to sit through a whole discussion about how soy production is supposedly terrible, and I thought, well, actually a large part of soy production goes toward making animal feed. I became the climate sinner. Discussions were had, and I kept thinking, why are we even having this discussion? And in the end, honestly, I found it a bit too much. “Why do you eat that? Why don’t you eat meat?” I just looked at them and said, well, for religious reasons, actually — because that usually ends the discussion. So it was all done quite humorously. And that’s what I mean — we very often anticipate the other person’s motives, the ones that drive us, and project them onto the other person. We immediately jump into judgement, into the moral one. Or if, I don’t know, if I fly somewhere and someone says to me, how can you even do that these days — then I think back over my life and think, wait a second, the last time I went on holiday I was 18. And that’s not a joke — I flew again after that, three days once, and one day another time, but the rest of the time I haven’t flown at all. That means my footprint, my climate footprint, is actually really tiny. I don’t have my own car. That means we really can’t project that onto other people, but we’re always so quick to do exactly that, to jump into that judgement. And I find it so funny, because I have two sayings for this. At school, when someone says, “well, you did that too,” I say, one hare says to the other, “but you have such long ears.” Or, when someone does a kind of moral or religious inspection on me, I always say, you know what, I’ll tell you something — I have two hands, and unfortunately I need them to carry my own sins, so I don’t have a free hand to point at anyone else, but mashallah, it seems to be different for you. That means conscious control also means maybe consciously not projecting our own insights onto other people, because we can’t walk in someone else’s shoes, and maybe we can’t steer the other person’s awareness, but we can steer our own. And so I’ll raise the pedagogical finger and say, I warn against projections, transferences, and anticipations that might not even be accurate. Thanks for listening.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And I think we’re allowed to tie this back to different room topics too, because it becomes really, really clear that this all relates to each other. And we do build the room topics on top of each other. We had this aspect of empathy just a few days ago, and what role empathy plays there. And especially with this conscious control and gaining insight, empathy plays into it too. And you can look at that from various perspectives, ultimately. On the one hand I’d like to pick up the term reliability again, which came up earlier — I’d like to bring in a really concrete example there. Just yesterday, we had the situation where we’d made a corresponding plan, to see how everything would fit together timing-wise, and so on, because, Layla, as you said, today’s a big celebration for us too, and this celebration is meant, and wants, to be celebrated. And, well, we’d agreed on what time we wanted to come together as a family — my husband, our son, and my mother, so to speak — to spend some time together. So we’d made a corresponding plan, and then yesterday evening, quite late, I got a message from my sister saying, please let mum know she’s being picked up tomorrow at 10:30, because she usually goes to my sister’s on Fridays — not normally that early, but because of the celebration they’d apparently organised some things beforehand, so my nephew is setting off earlier and would take her along, since he lives near us. That came really, really as a surprise, and I wrote back, let me clarify that, or please write to mum directly to check, because actually she’d said she wanted to spend the time with us tomorrow, today, and since we have several days of celebration, she’d spend time with you all later, and I don’t know what she wants to do now — I’d assumed, since we’d had a fixed plan, that it was basically set. What happened then was really fascinating, because apparently — I spoke to her myself — and suddenly she switched and said, well, okay, if I’m being picked up at 10:30, then we’ll just celebrate another time, along those lines. And I said, wait, but we already made a plan. And here, for example, is where you go into empathy and realise, okay, what are the underlying motives here? So not going into judgement, but into the other person’s perspective. That means, in that moment, to some degree, it’s not about reliability, but that she herself was possibly torn in the situation, in the sense of, well, how do I best handle this now? I’ve actually agreed to something here. On the other hand, my other daughter is now asking me to be picked up, and so she suddenly switched the plan around. In the end we made it transparent, so to speak, and talked about it, and found a middle path, splitting mum’s time a bit, so to speak — we said, okay, my sister then asked whether it would be possible for my husband to bring her over once we’d celebrated together. And we agreed on that. And that works for everyone — we celebrate at ours first, and then mum gets driven over afterward, so she can continue the celebration with my sister and her family too. And that made everyone happy. And this shows that this empathy, ultimately — it wasn’t a matter of reliability at that point, but that she was inwardly torn, in the sense of how do I actually manage this. But she didn’t put that into words, and that only came out because I picked up on it and brought it into the open. And this shows that we can jump quite quickly into judgement in certain situations, maybe even feel offended and say, well, that’s not what we agreed, great. Or we can — we have to try, through this empathy and this shift in perspective, so to speak, to take on the other person’s position too, to understand — and there we are back at this process of understanding — to be able to grasp, what’s actually happening here? What’s the phenomenon behind this sudden switch? Wait, I don’t understand this right now. Let me reflect on this and analyse what’s actually happening — and not just from my own personal perspective, but through the lens of the other person, or people, since often there are several people involved. And this shows really nicely that through this reflection we can gain insights too, and these in turn give us the possibility to move consciously back into steering too. And this reciprocal relationship that Jürgen mentioned earlier too, that it doesn’t just go in one direction, but represents a reciprocal relationship — both from gaining awareness and steering toward insight, and conversely from insight into awareness and then into steering too. Yes, I find that really fascinating, which is why I wanted to share this example with you. And with an eye on the time, I’d like to announce that tomorrow we’ll continue with insight and learning, or not-learning, as the room topic. Jürgen already opened up this aspect — especially when it comes to behaviour change and so on, we’re right at these learning processes. But there isn’t just learning, there’s also not-learning. And that’s why we want to look at this even more, from this perspective, tomorrow too — how gaining insight and not-learning depend on each other. And so I’m looking forward to tying back into that tomorrow and continuing, and I’d like to give you the chance in the closing round, if you’d like, to add anything else, or make cross-connections, and otherwise go straight into your closing words. For today, what were your highlights, or what would you like to underline again? Marc, and then Layla, please.
Thank you for your story, dear Yasemin, and once again it’s proven true for me — judgement is the enemy of self-constructed truth. A wonderful Friday to you all.
Thank you, thank you so much. Layla.
I just noticed — I don’t know much about cars, but I once read a book about ADHD, and it said, well, look, you basically have the engine of a sports car in your head, but unfortunately the brakes are often on. And then I thought, yes, but in rooms like this, my brakes aren’t on, and I really love that, because it’s like fireworks going off inside me. I also had to smile a lot at your example, Yasemin, because I thought about how my father would have reacted. I imagined myself with my parents, and thought, well, my adult self would have said, that’s fine, but my child self would have gone totally, like, why are you going there and not to me? And then I thought, oh, there’s a cultural aspect there too. And I really love that this sets off fireworks like that. And awareness — what is that, actually? I’d say, I think, therefore I am. That’s how it often feels for me. I’m in love with the German language. I’m in love with philosophy. And I’d like to say a really warm thank you for this room, because it always means so much to me. And if I may say so — I missed you all, and it’s lovely to be back.
Oh, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. Yes, I think really, really fascinating aspects came together, and I’d like to say, to close, that we’re always allowed to tie things back to ourselves too, and to keep coming back into this awareness, so to speak — that we naturally tend, to some degree, to keep making judgements or voicing appeals or similar, especially when we’re in exchange with others and might have a different view than they do. And sometimes it helps, I find personally — it’s at least a very personal way of dealing with certain situations — sometimes it’s hard for me too, to understand or relate to something. And here it’s really about consciously staying open about it, again and again, and always asking, against the background of where the other person stands. So, again, not going into judgement, along the lines of how can they think that way, but instead consciously reminding yourself, again and again, that the other person, in quotation marks, is also judging against the background of their own experiences and insights, the ones they’ve had up to this point. That doesn’t make them worse or better or anything like that, but ultimately it’s an aspect that lets me place things better, or understand better, or develop this empathy for where the other person currently stands. And this makes dealing with each other easier too, if I keep this in mind, consciously, and move into steering accordingly. This steering could be, for example, in communication, in how we deal with each other. And to keep picking up this insight, that against the background of our experiences, the sum of our experiences, so to speak, we have different synapses, different networks in the brain, which ultimately influence our judgement too, and accordingly, against this background, we keep arriving at evaluations. And the same applies to me too, so to speak. So the broader I’m positioned, the easier it is for me to juggle this, or to move into a process of understanding. It’s not always easy, but it makes it easier, in quotation marks, from my personal experience, to deal differently with different opinions, views, and so on, or behaviour that I might not perceive as correct, in quotation marks, rather than just going into judgement and saying, well, I don’t like that, or I find that stupid, or similar, or voicing appeals or similar, and instead stepping into a different kind of communication, a different level, and also emotionally regulating and neutralising my own way of dealing with it, by reframing things accordingly, or handling the situation empathetically, and trying to take on the other person’s perspective, and also reminding myself how a person ticks, how our brain works, and what that might actually trigger, and through that being able to shape how we deal with each other more positively, in quotation marks — actively shaping it myself, at that point. So, that maybe as closing words for today. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, to the room on insight and learning, or not-learning — how do gaining insight and not-learning depend on each other? That’s what we want to talk about tomorrow. With that, you’re warmly invited to join again tomorrow at 8am in the Deep Talk. Thank you, thank you so much for the intense exchange, and I wish you a lot of fun, whatever you have planned for today, and to those celebrating a big festival today, have a wonderful celebration. Until then. Ciao.
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