Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How do we exercise power and violence on our planet? That’s the question we explore in Room #933 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” 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 continue with violence against the environment, and we’ll be talking about, or rather engaging with, the question of how we exercise power and violence on our planet. I’m really curious what all comes together today. And in that spirit, you’re all very warmly invited to simply join in and step into the exchange, so we can look together at whatever comes to mind for you on the topic of violence against the environment. How do we exercise power and violence on our planet? And with that, I’m curious who would like to open the first round with me this morning, so that afterward we can gather different perspectives together and look in various directions accordingly, bringing in different impulses, developing new ideas in the exchange, sorting out thoughts, and in that sense then see what insights we can draw from the room. Just a quick reminder that the room is recorded the entire time, so anyone who joins automatically agrees to that, and I’d ask you to keep the room rules in mind if you want to join — a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is of course also very welcome to just use the chat.
Sabine, a very warm good morning. What’s the first thing you have to say on this topic?
A very warm good morning to the round. Yes, the first thing that came to my mind, of course, was the intentional, violent kind — when I think of the Brazilian rainforest, for instance. But of course you also have to say, that’s for raw materials, it’s been developing for years, but it still keeps happening regardless. On the other hand, from my own profession, CO2 came to mind, which is basically also a violation against the environment, in building technology. We know by now that buildings are among the worst environmental offenders. Nevertheless, a lot of people today still install gas and oil heating. So I can understand people a little, because there’s simply too much uncertainty and nobody quite knows which direction we’re heading in. But even in the private sphere, when I think about it, we could do a lot more. I don’t necessarily have the numbers in my head, but people say, well, we only account for, I think it’s six percent of Germany’s share, we can’t change anything anyway, so let’s just carry on. Or when you hear the absolute figure, it seems vanishingly small. So that was roughly my opening statement.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And you can see, depending on which numbers you look at in relative terms, you could of course approach different things differently. On one hand you could say, well, if that’s only a few percent globally, what does that even amount to? On the other hand you could say, you have to start somewhere, so to speak. So it’s quite interesting, when you pick up each individual topic, to look at it again and again, and this weighing-up theme keeps playing a very particular role in this context too.
Yes, a very warm good morning, dear Marc. I’d like to bring you in too.
Good morning to the round. Sabine gave me the cue, and that would have been my starting point too. First of all, a lovely weekend to you all. And I’ll start again by going back to the rooms — storytelling. And that’s exactly what happens. I actually looked up the numbers again yesterday. Storytelling is, and you keep hearing this, in everything we discuss here, we always see what we want to see. And that was a great starting point. According to the number I found yesterday, Germany only accounts for 1.8 percent of CO2 pollution. So I lean back, get my car keys out, I’m even planning my next vacation later, everything’s wonderful. That’s what happens if I have this thought and this storytelling — environmental pollution, well, we can’t do anything, it’s only 1.8 percent. But the number looks completely different if we look at the countries that contribute the most to CO2 pollution. And there, Germany is in seventh place. So we’re in seventh place globally for environmental pollution, as the largest country, economically speaking. But overall it’s still only, only in quotation marks, of course it’s a lot, 1.8 percent, because China is ahead, then the US, then India, and I don’t have the exact order in my head. But I find it so fascinating how we always pull in numbers depending on what we want to achieve. And that would have been exactly my starting point too — just because I find it totally fascinating, depending on which angle, which direction this discussion goes in. That’s also what the economy does, picking the number that suits it, and 1.8 percent means, for the listener, first of all just 1.8 percent. Fine, out of 100, I can imagine 1.8 percent is nothing, so I do nothing. We’re the sixth-biggest CO2 polluter in the world. And then, as I said, it feels completely different. And we could tackle basically any topic this way, always pulling in a statistic, pulling in scientists, and so on, and it remains fascinating to keep discussing topics together and always paying attention to who’s coming from which angle and who’s using which statistic for their own purposes.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And the next question that would arise from that is also, to some extent, to consider — if Germany is in seventh place worldwide, then the question also arises again, what share does CO2 actually make up within that seventh place? Maybe there are completely different factors playing a role here. So seventh place alone isn’t enough, from this way of looking at it, to actually be able to draw conclusions. So theoretically it could be, for example, that on closer inspection it turns out CO2 makes up a smaller share, that there are other areas that weigh much more heavily, all the way to further considerations one could make, looking at whether that’s the area with the biggest impact that can be implemented fastest in terms of counter-action. Sometimes it’s also the case that you could take several smaller line items and act faster on those. So there are different ways of looking at this too, which in any case, with all these statistical aspects being considered, would also need to be raised as a question and sensibly factored into the assessment, and conclusions drawn from that.
Sabine, you wanted to add something here.
Yes, first of all thanks for the numbers, Marc. I don’t have them in my head, but relatively speaking, I knew something similar. And to follow up on your point, that’s exactly the thing. I believe, again I say I believe because I don’t know it 100 percent, CO2-wise, 50 percent comes from the building sector. That’s already quite a number. But now we go and say, the 80-year-old grandparents now have to renovate their house, because they’re the ones — well, they don’t actually contribute that much. I mean, now you take a different step and say, go to the municipalities first, go to where something big can be achieved. Because there too, the small things obviously still have to be done. If someone builds new today, that they build sensibly, that goes without saying. But what do we actually achieve with a house from 1956 that needs so much work and would cost so much to bring up to a decent energy standard, that you could actually say, a certain zero-energy standard or demolition — we’re not going to achieve that ad hoc today either. And that’s always relative again. And then there are completely different approaches too, and I found that interesting, that was in this interview I once shared a link to with you. There, for example, came up — I can’t judge, I’m no expert in this field, I can’t judge what effect this would have or whether it could work or not — but this thought came up, or a kind of impulse. We have so many highways and asphalt that’s used, and this asphalt, for example, is very dark, which then has to do with CO2 again, and you could make sure that when building new highways, updating them, so to speak, renovating them, that you use light-colored asphalt instead of dark, and that would also make quite a difference. Those would be completely different approaches, so to speak, and it shows how much creativity plays a role here, that you don’t always necessarily have to focus on what’s generally and directly visible, but maybe on other aspects too, to think outside the box, to pick up on aspects that maybe aren’t run-of-the-mill and don’t necessarily lie on the surface, that it can definitely make sense to look at such aspects too. And I’d like to go beyond CO2 here, because today’s room topic shouldn’t just be about CO2, that’s of course what’s very present for us because it’s simply audible everywhere in the media, all the time, with all the heat pumps and so on, it’s of course something that immediately comes to mind when we’re currently talking about the environment and violence against the environment. The question is, what else is there? I mean, that’s by far not everything. Where else are there basically aspects where we could say, all these are aspects where we have an influence, an impact on our planet? And what comes to my mind directly, for example, is that over the last three years we’ve also used a lot of masks and things like that. I saw a video about this in the meantime, about how much — we know about plastic waste in the oceans, but in the meantime we also have a lot of masks in the oceans. That means waste everywhere from — masks as waste, so to speak, all the way to animals getting tangled in these elastic bands and so on, and then either being freed because it’s noticed in time, or even dying because they can no longer free themselves. Just another aspect that comes to mind.
Sabine, Marc, do you have further examples here, or would you like to add to this?
Yes, gladly, Marc. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the city again — last week, so please take this with a grain of salt, it’s not 100 percent accurate, I would have liked to tell you the city, but I at least read about the Erft valley, we all remember that big flood, and there’s now a city that has problems with reconstruction, and the problem was that they had the idea to plant trees. That’s a good idea, planting trees, because then when it rains again, water can soak into the ground and so on. But now there’s no money for the city because of the reconstruction plan — I can imagine this news is accurate. The bureaucracy is such that the city only gets money if it’s rebuilt exactly as it was. That means trees aren’t planned for in the city center. So everything has to be paved and sealed again, so the water can’t drain away. And I would have liked to look up which city it was, but I couldn’t find the news again this morning. But if that’s true, and given our bureaucratic madness I can well imagine it is, then you really have to hold your head and say, these are partly causes where common sense simply isn’t applied, where the press simply doesn’t put enough pressure on when changes happen and people do things that of course follow the rules. These rules exist somewhere. But just because a rule exists somewhere doesn’t mean it makes sense. And what we do too is question it, and keep questioning it until someone with higher power and authority has the ability to change certain things too. That was one example. And the second example that comes to mind, which I keep noticing on my travels, because you don’t even have to think that far — I don’t smoke, and this isn’t meant as an attack on smokers, but I always think about where I could contribute something so that the environment is less burdened. And I can’t scientifically prove this number either, I’ve read different numbers for it. If you walk through the city and throw away a cigarette butt, it apparently takes up to 400 years in water for it to fully decompose. And up to 700 to 1000 liters of water could be polluted by a single cigarette, by the pollutants it contains. Please google that yourselves, I’ve read different numbers in different reports. But these are just so many, many small things where we don’t necessarily always have to wait for a change in the law that the evil politicians have to make, but where everyone can think about their own behavior, how do I actually live, what do I do. And another point that comes to mind is world championships — when we’re not flying around for recreation, but just to championships. Sports cause CO2 too, and quite interestingly, I once read an article where people argue about what’s more CO2-unfriendly, Formula 1, where you’d think they use a lot of gasoline, or the soccer World Cup. And then I found a figure that the soccer World Cup in Russia was ten times more harmful in terms of CO2 than Formula 1, because of all the flights and so on that happened. So our vacations and our travel behavior also contribute to CO2 emissions, of course.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And while you were talking about cigarette butts and things like that, it occurred to me that chewing gum is also apparently very devastating. That just popped up as an impulse for me. Sabine, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, when Marc mentioned vacation, something else came to mind too. We once went snorkeling in Bali, and there were these huge stingrays, very impressive. And suddenly something else appeared, and that was giant plastic bags. Not just one, it was like a whole bed of them. And I thought, oh nice, a stingray here, and then a plastic bag looks almost similar in the water. And the second thing we came across, we were on an island and just walked into the island. In the front row, great hotel, everything’s wonderful, kind of individual vacation feel. And then you walk three rows into the island and there was a burning plastic bag. There was a big landfill that was burning, burning deliberately, because that’s how they burned it that year, and our disposable plastic bottles were thrown on it. I found that — and as long as we in the world still think this way, but I also don’t know how else we’re supposed to do it, because the people there, it’s about survival for them. And that’s of course where we get back to the topic of education, in a completely different setting. They probably don’t think first about how do I educate myself, but how do I survive. Very, very difficult topic.
Yes, absolutely, and that always plays a role in this context. That means the question is also, especially when we look at aspects like outsourcing certain things to have them manufactured abroad, and then look at which countries certain things are made or carried out in. So on one hand, having solved the problem in your own country by relocating it abroad, so to speak — it’s already in the word, it’s ultimately just a relocation, but the problem itself isn’t actually resolved by that. And what the background is, whether it’s for the sake of the environment that we relocate it, or so our numbers in Germany look right, or because production abroad is cheaper — there are various factors playing a role here too. And then on one hand, wanting to produce the whole thing cheaply again and bring it to sale here, ideally as cheaply as possible. And I can’t really fully understand who, where, how, which middlemen, through which aspects that gets steered, and how environmentally neutral or environmentally positive, let’s say, the whole thing then gets implemented. These are all aspects where you could say it’s partly a bit of looking away, or something I don’t have direct influence on, so I can’t really do anything about it either. But indirectly, through our behavior, indirectly through orders placed here, especially in the context of goods that then get exported, imported, and so on, that all plays a role too. And you could open up a lot of discussions around this and talk about it. The question with this environmental aspect, when we talk about environment, does that just cover everything — does the animal world and so on actually count as part of it too? So basically it might be interesting to look at what exactly environment means in this context. I just pulled up a definition — here it says, for example at Oxford, everything that surrounds a person, affects them, and influences their living conditions, especially nature. And then we even have the circle of people someone lives among, has contact with, is in relationship with — someone might feel misunderstood by someone in their environment, for example. Though I think we might have to distinguish here between social environment and natural environment. So maybe it would be quite interesting to open up this aspect too, to look, based on the examples we’re picking up, at what falls under animal world and so on too. So there are more components to the environment than maybe what’s trivially obvious, where it’s just about CO2 damage, CO2 levels and so on, which have a negative influence. Maybe we have a few other examples here too that we can add on top. How do you two see it, Sabine, Marc, when we talk about the environment? What all falls under that for you?
If we’re going in that direction, then we’d certainly also have to distinguish the animal world we breed, that we keep at home. That’s more, I’d say, our immediate surroundings, because we influence that ourselves. And the environment of animals that we deliberately don’t let live as they could. If I think, for example, that by now everyone has their front yard turned into a gravel garden and removes every blade of grass, or makes the lawn so perfectly neat that there’s actually no animal left there anymore, then we’re also influencing the world of bees and insects, which actually benefit us, but which might also say, if it’s a nuisance. That’s what comes to my mind on this.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to add something too, before I bring Jürgen in?
Yes, and thank you, dear Yasemin, I came across a scientist yesterday who won a Nobel Prize, namely Paul Crutzen, I hope I’m pronouncing that right, he’s an atmospheric chemist. And there’s a group of scientists who deal specifically with this topic. There’s a new era — according to these scientists there’s a new era we’re now living in, and this era is called the Anthropocene. And that means, as opposed to a biome, which describes an area with shared ecosystems, for example a forest or a desert, the anthrome includes humans and their influence on the ecosystem. And humans don’t just use nature, they shape nature. Starting with rice paddies in China, which didn’t exist naturally before, where trees get cut down. And that’s exactly what’s being connected here — which humans influence nature to what degree. And in that context I also read that only 23 percent of our world is still untouched by humans at all. So they’re really still as nature created them, 23 percent of our land area. And that concerns, dear Yasemin, coming to your aspect, the animals too, of course, because through their spread, through shaping the landscape, through their resource consumption, humans also take away the animals’ habitat. And it’s estimated that currently the death rate in nature, in the plant world and the animal world, is a thousand times higher than what would naturally occur, due also to the human-made transformation. So not just through predation, but through transformation and reshaping of the earth.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And especially because you used this word, “shapes nature,” that we’re also shapers at the same time, I find that really fascinating too, because we’ve had this several times, that violence isn’t just to be looked at from the negative side, but also somewhat from the positive side. And so the question would also arise in this context — violence against the environment, if that’s our heading, what are the negative aspects, the violent aspects, and what might also be positive violent aspects, in the sense of where we also shape nature in a positive way. And I find that wonderful, and with that we also have a nice bridge we can hand over to Jürgen, to bring him in too.
A very warm good morning, dear Jürgen.
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning to everyone. I’ll cross the bridge now, thank you. With regard to what preceded, the topic connection that was made, namely regarding environment and surroundings. And I think we’ve already entered a stage where we’re immensely expanding our understanding of what we define as surroundings and environment, namely through this overused buzzword, the conquest of space. And I read a very remarkable piece of news yesterday, that initial steps have now succeeded in transporting solar energy not bound to cables anymore, but directly via either microwaves or laser technology. This gives space research, with regard to, I’ll use the word even though it’s not quite right, renewable or alternative energies, a completely different standing, because just the time window for using solar energy would then no longer be dependent on day and night, but usable 24 hours a day, if this problem is solved, that I can transport this energy to Earth via a medium at any time. Why am I saying this? First, of course, connecting to your initial question, what actually is our environment and what is our surroundings? I think we now have to think beyond our globe. That’s one thing. On the other hand, I also thought, this doesn’t heal the cause, because we would then be delivering additional energy to our home globe, which, with regard to energy scarcity, would solve part or maybe a lot of our problems, but not the cause of the effects connected to that on the globe. I hope I’ve expressed myself reasonably clearly. So the industry, in its hunger for energy, would be satisfied, and I’ll deliberately overstate this now, could continue its disruptive work against our home globe. We dimension — now I’m provoking again — we’re only redimensioning our root problem, namely the violence against our earth, our planet, in a new way. But the essential thing was the trigger from you, to say, yes, we should and can no longer only mentally rise up with regard to our globe. How should things continue? But we now really know we need to think beyond it in a completely different dimension. I’m of the opinion that I’ll do a lot of thinking about this in the near future. Thank you for listening.
Thank you so much. And that fits well with this example I brought up earlier, with relocating the problem abroad. So this is another case here — then I have a temporary solution again, but I haven’t addressed the cause. That’s often something, whether with environmental topics or other topics, that we can observe very well in many places, that symptom treatment is done rather than cause treatment. That requires first knowing the cause, and addressing the root of the problem, and not only once it’s become visible, at the symptoms. And we can transfer that to many areas too.
Sabine, Marc wanted to add something here.
This morning while shopping, in preparation for this topic, it occurred to me how many phones I’ve already had in my life. And I come to nine phones, because my phones all last at least six to eight years. And with that thought I felt a bit uneasy — if you ask the world’s supposedly best company, the biggest and most valuable company in the US, why do you actually release a new phone model every year? I mean, who needs that? Is your quality so bad that you have to buy a new phone every year? Do they break after a year? No, certainly not. They last a long time. What I want to say with this is also that I noticed in myself, with this finger-pointing, that the view shouldn’t only be directed outward, but inward too, not with a wagging finger. But I found the question totally fascinating, to ask the biggest company in the world why there’s a new phone every year, whether they assume the previous year’s phone no longer works, or what the reason is. Now in connection with the environmental responsibility a company also has. But the question is of course only hypothetical and rhetorical. They release a new phone because they want to generate revenue and because that’s how money is made. And that’s the root of the evil in many respects. If money is made with a product, be it food or whatever, then it’s hard to stop that. And Jürgen already mentioned that the meat industry, we had that topic this week too, meat consumption also contributes enormously to the environment. Starting with milk we produce, starting with meat. And I’d like to hear the outcry if a politician calculated this for people and told the Germans, do you have to eat meat every day, do you need sausage every day. Because the lobby, the individual lobbies in a particular industry are so powerful that you can really only start with education in schools, with upbringing, because these lobbies, whichever lobby you pick, are so overpowering that you can’t even get at it with laws. So it’s not finger-pointing that helps, but only looking inward. And asking yourself where you’re willing to make cutbacks.
Yes, thank you so much. Exactly the example you brought up with phones, why do we need, or why is a new model actually brought to market every year? Sure, it’s about economic aspects too. Nevertheless, I think there would also be various possibilities here if you simply thought about it. I could imagine, for example, similar to what we now have with cars — I know this from our electric car, that we keep getting updates. We don’t go to the workshop every year, we don’t go get a new car every year. That comparison might sound absurd to some, but it could be done that way too. We could also say with cars, new models come out every year too, but that doesn’t mean, conversely, that we now go and buy a new car every year. It does mean that for many, though, which is certainly also connected to prices, or the money I’m allowed to put on the table, so to speak. Nevertheless, if we make this comparison, there’s now the possibility, and that’s why I picked the electric car as an example, that certain features that didn’t exist before simply get added through an update, so to speak. That does exist in some form with phones too, but you could take it further and think about how, usually the providers don’t have the intention, they really want to sell a completely new phone and make revenue, and that’s why they bring new phones to market. But you could also think in the direction of what concepts could be developed so that it’s essentially not a new phone, but is upgraded, so to speak, so that you offer something as a service, thinking in subscription models, update models or whatever, a kind of tuning for the phone. Maybe even with the vision or the idea behind it that you create connections here, and at the same time pick up on this vision too. And I could imagine that people would actually be interested in going along with this, joining in, because they might find the idea good in principle. And things like that would maybe just need to be tried out, instead of assuming, following the motto, that doesn’t work or doesn’t bring in enough money. So I think there would be possibilities here too, to definitely rethink and think anew, to take other paths. And I think we’re at a really important aspect now. That means, whatever topic we pick up, with the aspect of violence against the environment or with other topics in other rooms we’ve already had, it’s always also about a change on the level of thinking. And that brings us back to one of Jürgen’s favorite topics too. That means, here we have this “okay, I’ve recognized something, but how does it actually continue now?” And this rethinking, just generating this insight is one step, and that doesn’t succeed for everyone yet, to really achieve that across the board and then initiate a rethink. And that requires all sorts of different things and aspects that we can pick up here, all the way to ideas that might at first seem completely absurd, like the one I just brought up with the phone. But only by starting to think totally freely of judgments in all sorts of directions do I possibly even come up with ideas for what else could be offered, which on one hand still serves the company’s economic interest, ensuring the numbers keep working, and at the same time creates a new offering, so to speak, that ultimately isn’t so harmful to our environment.
Would anyone like to add something? Sabine, I think you’d already twitched, and then gladly Jürgen.
Yes, first about your phone example, Marc, I found that really interesting. I’m missing examples right now myself. My daughter got a new phone yesterday, but not because the old one is outdated, but because the battery wasn’t charging as well anymore. Now she’s taken out insurance, because it’s been stolen twice already, went to Apple, showed them the phone, and got a new one. The question is, was that technical, could it have been done differently, or are things produced these days in such a way that it’s actually no longer feasible? And there’s practically a lack of rethinking from several sides, from the producer, from the consumer, and exactly — but the same thing was what you just said, Yasemin, about the car. Of course we first need to say, I might drive — what you usually see too — and I unload myself. I mean, if I walk through a certain street in Mannheim, where a lot of cruising happens, and I look at the cars there, people today pay a lot of money to lease a car, just to drive an AMG through the streets. So your thoughts, Yasemin, I find really great there. But that also has to do with education again.
Yes, absolutely, thank you so much. I’m curious what Jürgen has to say about this now.
Thank you, dear Yasemin. I’d like to briefly address your initial point. The key is the way of thinking, and specifically, in my view, a different way of thinking, simply from the fact that when we talk about violence against the environment — I’ll equate environment now, not in the oversized dimension including outer space, but the globe — then we have a worldwide problem. And this violence, quite obviously for everyone in the most varied facets, is being exercised worldwide against our globe and our environment in the most varied forms. And now comes the decisive point, in my view, on the basis of different political and economic states, which differ very clearly, for example, between America, between Europe, and, as a counterpart or opposing position to that, Africa. What do I want to say with that? For me, first of all, if we’re obviously dealing with a worldwide problem, then we need, and this problem manifests itself in definite acts of violence against our nature, then we also need someone who has the right and the power of intervention, worldwide, and in a coordinated way. And it’s not enough to simply say we have a worldwide problem, but the conclusion from that is that we say, and we can only solve this problem in a globally coordinated way, and not broken down into fractal organizations, but only together. And the problem that essentially stands against that is that in these different fractals, so to speak, different organizations or states of economic, political, educational development, different levels of need have become established and currently exist. That means this hunger, for example, that’s often reported, from Africa, to reach the technological, economic, and also the social status of, say, Europe or America. That’s a will that I don’t think anyone can deny these people, that they too want medical care, technological provision, security, work, and to be able to provide for their own income — you can’t deny them that. And that’s what dimensions this problem for me. I’ll overstate it again now by saying this actually points toward a world government, because in the most varied facets we’ve subjugated this globe to ourselves, at different stages, at different speeds, and now we’ve arrived at a status quo that’s also very substantially and significantly different, and yet we’ve generated a worldwide problem. So, in summary, this is essentially what’s already being attempted, for example through the Kyoto Protocol, through the Paris Agreement, where an attempt was made to involve the world community. But in my view that can only succeed if this very community is willing, through participation and through very concrete support of those who have a legitimate hunger for growth and development, to reach the level of others, is supported. And so, for me at the moment at least, there’s no sign that even the will exists to create such a structure with a worldwide right of intervention, to create this same level both in terms of need and in terms of regulations. A huge problem and question mark for me for the near future. Thank you for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. And especially in this context, whether we’re just talking about the environment or bringing in other topics here too, I think it actually makes sense to broaden this a bit here, to see this entanglement too. Especially this aspect of world government, since you used that term, if I remember correctly — I think there are definitely visible efforts, from my point of view, once you’ve understood the connections here and can see this, that all sorts of different activities, especially in recent years, have been on the advance, where exactly that seems to be the intention behind it. So if we start with a central patient record, through to the WHO as the World Health Organization, then we have the IPCC, in environmental topics and so on, where experts also present various figures and so on and so forth. That means, quite obviously there are efforts here that go exactly in this direction, and per se maybe aren’t even wrong, because exactly this field of tension and these dilemmas are there. Nevertheless, when agreements are made, like this Paris Agreement I’m thinking of right now, there are countries involved who, precisely against the background of having completely different issues, namely satisfying their hunger — hunger not for money, but really hunger — and it’s about existential issues and so on, who then say, sure, we’ll join in, provided you finance us so we can participate. And then that gets taken apart again with highs and lows, so to speak, on the other side, but it’s still quite understandable that something like that gets put on the table, because they simply have completely different challenges they have to deal with here. Put fairly bluntly now. Nevertheless, and this is where I’d like to hook in again, on one hand it probably needs a lot more where certain or many countries, ideally even all countries, move in one direction in unison, so to speak, reach an agreement, look together at tackling it, without — and this is really important, I think — taking the risk that freedom and so on gets restricted, because I think here too there’s a big dynamic, a big field of tension, because the question is, what’s the price, or what could the price be, if we don’t handle this carefully, in quotation marks, because here we’re back at this connection with power and violence again. One is the violence, the other is, what legitimization, what’s behind it, how does the whole thing get managed structurally, how is this actually intended, and what can also happen if it goes wrong at one point or another, in quotation marks, or rather, what’s needed to build in the corresponding safeguards, so to speak, so that it doesn’t go wrong.
Yes, Jürgen, go ahead.
Sorry, excuse me, I’ve come onto this microphone multiple times now and I really didn’t want to interrupt you, but I still wanted to give you feedback on this synthesis, and I have to squeeze in and say, yes, let’s say, for what purpose? Because you mentioned the WHO, for example. And we’ve also, in the past, repeatedly gotten to know the other side of this, in quotation marks, potential world government or world power that’s gradually forming, through this expert talk with, unfortunately I don’t remember the first name anymore, Mr. Wolf. The “for what purpose” is really the decisive thing. And even with a WHO, this question arises very significantly for me, because behind every action and behind every will, and I’ll really take this for myself now, stands an individual will, first of all. And this will is nothing other than an expression of a personal or a group-related power, whether that’s the WHO or, God knows, some form of government, whatever it may be. And if I solve a problem today with regard to economic disparities, from an economist’s perspective the question always has to be asked whether this doing-good on the outside really is that. If I now, for example, put a region in the position to be able to deal with a pandemic in the future, in Africa for example — why weren’t factories built there that would give the ability to manufacture medications locally there in the future? Then for an economist there’s always the second question they ask themselves. Well, besides the benefit, the degree of dependency you’re giving up by putting the other party into a new status. And behind that, for me, lies the essential aspect of partial political will, and also the intent from various country perspectives or alliance perspectives, which I believe will make this final solution seem obsolete in the future. I certainly can’t imagine that we’ll cut this Gordian knot, if only for the reason that I’d be giving up the power of dependencies. Thank you.
Yes, and that would then also go hand in hand with loss of control and so on. And so, yes, thank you so much, I think that’s a great contribution here. And that’s to some extent also the criticism that, you meant Ernst Wolf by the way, that’s the first name, that he and others also raise, that with many institutions that are supposed to serve exactly this purpose, exactly this idea does get fulfilled in a sense, but then their own interests always keep coming to the forefront here too. And they, regardless of which institution we’re talking about, aren’t supposed to be there to fulfill entrepreneurial and political interests aimed at even more money, even more power, but basically it’s actually, at least outwardly, in quotation marks, what I’ll call being pretended, about a different intention, and then this intention has to actually be fulfilled too, and that’s why you have to look very, very closely at this in some cases, and mustn’t simply see it uncritically as a good idea. The idea is good, the question is whether it actually works that way in implementation, and here we’re allowed to look at it very, very critically.
Maybe that as a closing thought, and then I’d like to bring in Layla too, thank you for your patience, dear Layla. I assumed this maybe didn’t necessarily connect with this point, which is why I let you wait a bit, to bring you in too now. So depending on whether you’d like to hook in here, or on one of the points that were raised earlier when you raised your hand, feel free to bring that in too.
A very warm good morning.
A very warm good morning.
I’d actually like to hook onto a different point, that’s no problem at all. It’s just, I just want it to fit. It was actually about Sabine’s point, because Sabine — I also bought myself a phone recently, and I thought, wow, I have the iPhone 13, that’s already pretty cool. And then I noticed, oops, a lot of updates aren’t happening. A lot of apps won’t run on it at some point under certain circumstances. And I think it’s actually produced that way. And if you asked my mother, she’d probably also say, well, a washing machine used to work for over 20 years. Today it breaks right after the warranty expires. So you always wonder, is it like that, is it not like that. A lot of tests are being closed off there. What I can say, what I’ve seen, is apparently that parts made of plastic get built in. Whether an actual expiration date gets built in, I don’t know. But a lot of people tend to say yes, so that it gets produced again. I think that has to do with interests too. And I just wanted to say, this all reminds me a bit of a relationship. If we had to put our relationship with nature as a status on Facebook, it would say “complicated.” And why would it be complicated? Because there was someone who once said, “back to nature,” right, and then someone added, “but please not on foot.” And I think that’s where the problem lies. Because we, for me, we have a relationship with nature. But we also want our interests and influences to count there too. And I think that’s the same in a relationship, that you always have the feeling, well, I’d like it to be this and that, and you’re allowed to be however you want, but please be such that I also get something out of it, under certain circumstances. I don’t know if that’s the picture of a good relationship — not for me, at least. And yet we as humans tend to lean that way sometimes, under certain circumstances. And I think that could be a point worth thinking about further. Because we love to watch some natural phenomena and look at them and think, wow, that’s so intense and so impressive. And yet we try to domesticate nature. So, small example — if you make a gravel garden, you’re domesticating nature. That’s super practical for you. For the bees, that’s not good, not at all. For nature, that’s not great at all. But I understand the point. And that’s the two cents I wanted to add. And yes, thanks for the nice, or the good room. And I’ve gotten a lot to think about now, especially through the last things you said. And that’s really nice.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. “Back to nature, but please not on foot” — I particularly liked that. And exactly what you said, this “it should also bring me something,” this kind of thinking. But that brings us back to our brain again. So we’re back at benefit. That means, in quotation marks, I personally don’t think we should blame ourselves at all if nature designed it this way, that we obviously ask ourselves exactly these questions, and quite fully automatically, without thinking about it. So with every topic we open up, our brain runs its own script in the background and asks, what’s in it for me? Does this threaten my existence, first question. Second question, what’s in it for me? And that’s why it’s all the more important, once we’ve understood that, we also have the opportunity to set up and build solutions developed here, maybe precisely against this background, so that this gets taken into account. So especially something like, if we pick up the phone example again — theoretically, no company would need to bring new phones to market every year. I think we all fairly agree that this has nothing to do with new updates only being possible on the new device. Quite the opposite, this is deliberately steered on the old ones, there are dozens of examples. We already have iPhones over several generations, if you use them over a longer period. And Apple apparently believes that after a certain point the device has to be replaced. It’s not that the device is broken, but it overheats, and whatever else. And it has to do with certain updates no longer being able to run. And a company could of course control that if they wanted to, but they don’t want to. Also understandable at first. And now, and here we’re at the example you brought up, whether it’s true or not, you said it’s documented in many places that it is true. That makes sense too, if I produce something and only test for — it’s not about whether I specifically build something in to make it fail after two years, that would be strong manipulation, and that’s not what it’s about from my perspective. If, in a company’s development, I already aim for products to withstand a certain quality standard — what should it be able to endure? Should it have a long lifespan, or should it last at least two years? Just with this distinction, with which I generate products in development, I already get a completely different result at the end. If I don’t say it’s about a long lifespan, ideally as long as possible, but only aim for covering these two years of warranty or guarantee period, the minimum required, then I also get a completely different result. So you could hook in there to realize this difference, so to speak. And there are many examples of this. There, they don’t aim at all, so to speak, at doing it for the long term. But if I’ve now recognized that humans have this “what’s in it for me,” and actually, as a company, as a society, looking at it from different perspectives, have the interest in contributing something, I can of course also approach the topics with new questions and actually consider what kind of updates or whatever, a reload or however you’d want to call it, whatever term fits best, you could look at, to avoid encouraging a constantly new phone coming to market, but instead, maybe even much better financing models, in quotation marks, for a company, because then maybe I even have something where I could create a recurring revenue model with it, which is much more secure for a company, in quotation marks, than always just having sold this one device. So I think you could definitely start in many places here, but it does require thinking differently, or thinking outside the box, and not always copying what everyone trivially does on the market, or being a pioneer yourself. It doesn’t matter at all what position the company is in. And instead of always just running in the same direction, trying out new directions too. And that doesn’t mean right away replacing entire business models, but you could introduce it as a pilot first and see how it works or is received, before deciding whether to invest more time, energy, money into it as a company. So I think there are definitely many possibilities we could pursue here, that would be viable, if we don’t just accept what seems trivial to us, but simply try to rethink, to think anew. And especially when it comes, to pick this up again, to not doing symptom treatment on the most varied topics we have on earth, but wanting to work on the causes. Only that can ultimately bring a solution. Then we may start, in quotation marks, to actually rethink too.
Yes, so much for my statement on this. And now I’m curious in the closing round, Marc, Jürgen, Layla, Sabine, what you might want to highlight from today’s room. Marc.
One point I’d like to add, very briefly. This morning it also occurred to me, and I find it insane too, Jürgen said energy will be a topic. And I come to that because Elon Musk said three days ago that in two years the lights will go out. We need such a huge amount of electricity that it can’t be covered that way, and he advised that we’d need to build power plants. And that made me think of cryptocurrency, and I thought, what madness it is how much energy is spent on cryptocurrency, because people decide we need an alternative payment system. That’s not necessarily energy we actually need for survival, but just because it’s a business model. Otherwise I can only say, I’m totally happy, I don’t know the other planets, and even if it were possible to fly to another planet now, I find the Earth beautiful, and I’ll go outside today, look at nature, to then answer for myself every day the question of why I’m doing this, where I’m willing to accept restrictions, and I’m willing to do that, so I can keep seeing these beautiful sights, as I still know them now, for a very, very long time. A great start to the weekend for all of you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, though people are already working on alternative options and things like that here too. And you have to be careful again here, because if we consider how much laptop, PC, phone use we have in daily use, we also have a massive energy consumption here, of course. So I think we have the opportunity to look in many directions here too. Thank you.
Jürgen.
I’d like to connect to two points again. One, to what you addressed, in connection with our brain and our fundamental cognitive imprinting that we’ve had for millennia, namely with regard to the problem of these innovation cycles and the activities and strategies of companies. Please don’t forget, these innovation cycles are also substantially driven by a primal human drive, which at some point in the 15th, 16th century flowed into what we call science. So our striving always for the new, always for what doesn’t work at the moment, to realize it in the future regardless. Just as a note, basically this, I don’t want to force it, but this whole, or this natural striving for the new, for the better, and not wanting to attribute this one-sidedly only to a pure corporate strategy. I think this is inside us. And the second, somewhat more sensitive area, which I’d just like to bring up as a note, is that the utility function of such innovation cycles, or of entrepreneurial activities, the utility functions, are determined not only by the product, but especially by the number of users. I know this is a tricky topic, but there are very concrete statements in the scientific field, proven multiple times, that our planet, even under the current constellation of exploitation, or use of this planet, would pose no problem at all with a different number of people on Earth. And that there are considerations in that regard too, which I just want to add as a light-hearted close to this very interesting round. And I wish you all a nice weekend. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much. And of course you could think about that in completely different directions, both positive and negative. The aspect I’d like to pick up on again in this context, we had this in other rooms too, these ethical, moral discussions, especially when it came to technologies in the healthcare context. And I think this fits wonderfully here too, exactly what makes this problem clear again. On one hand, yes, it’s nice if we can, in quotation marks, make sure people live ever longer, maybe diseases can be defeated, and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, and we must never forget this, we’re also intervening in nature here again. And that always has at least two sides. On one hand, as someone affected, I’m of course glad and grateful. On the other hand, looking at it from a societal perspective, and this isn’t just about extending life, it’s not just with regard to energy or environment or such, very diverse problems arise from these chain reactions that get triggered here, where you can really look at it very critically, whether that’s actually the intention, or should be. These aspirations have always existed, and always will, but we must always keep looking at it critically, ethically, morally, whether this striving for a kind of endless life, so to speak, live forever, whether that’s what we need in the world, or whether it’s actually counterproductive, and in that sense actually only contributes to this earth at some point not being able to survive either, because we’ve done things by human hand that at some point won’t allow it to work out anymore. It’s a bit like a glass — if I keep filling it with water, at some point it overflows. And that’s what we’re talking about with these so-called tipping points. You can argue about where these tipping points sit, there are many discussions about that, whether it’s a bit earlier or a bit later or whatever. But these tipping points ultimately exist. And the question here, and not just with environmental topics, with all sorts of topics, is, do we always just add more on top? Or don’t we also need to regulate ethically, morally, and so on? And those are exactly the dynamics and fields of tension we also have here.
Layla?
Yes, so many fields of tension. If you ask me for the highlight now, I’d personally say, the question of what violence is — we’ve had that, I don’t know, a lot of people probably think you can answer that quite simply, and what I always notice, and I notice this again and again in your rooms too, no, it can’t be answered so simply, because when does a need turn into egoism, when is it that we use someone as a means to an end? When does benefit turn into a means to an end? And I think asking yourself these questions helps in dealing with it. Because deciding all of that is quite difficult. That’s why we’re back at world government — who’s supposed to do that? Who’s supposed to take care of everyone’s needs? Who’s supposed to make sure interests don’t end up in egoism? And before I get too long in my remarks, I’ll just say, you can tell there are a lot of questions and a lot of impulses, and thanks for that.
Yes, thank you so much. Questions are always good. Sabine.
Well, I found Layla’s saying, back to nature but please not on foot, already very memorable, and I think it captures well where our thinking is heading right now. I wish you all a nice weekend. Thanks. Bye.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I can only agree with that. I found that saying great too, I already repeated it earlier. Back to nature, but please not on foot. I think we’re allowed to think about that and look inward at this point too. I found it totally great. Today we had a room where we talked about violence against nature, or against the environment, and opened up different perspectives. And we also managed to keep building bridges to other rooms we’ve already had, making these connections, making them clear, underlining them, showing the dilemmas and fields of tension, in order to lead back to the topic again. So I found this really, really enriching. It’s okay to have a lot of question marks at the end of a room. I actually always find that very, very good. We don’t have to find answers everywhere already, but through the search mode we switch on in our brain, through the question marks, we only get there through sorting our thoughts, through hooking onto prior experiences we have, onto ideas, sensitizing ourselves to look in different directions, focusing again on certain topics, discovering new things in the coming days when we consume some news or read reports, read articles and similar things. And that keeps bringing us further too, with regard to generating insights. So I found the room really, really inspiring today. I’m very happy about the exchange we had. And I’m especially looking forward to tomorrow, “Digital Campfire” with me. It’s about unfiltered stories at the digital campfire on the topic of power and violence, part two. I’d like to pick up a few aspects from different rooms again, and underline the problems I still see in some places with very concrete examples. And then come into exchange with you together and think about it. And I’m very, very curious what you’ll say to that. As I said, various aspects, all on the topic of power and violence from the rooms we’ve had so far. There were various keywords that kept coming up, which I collect for myself, which I think about afterward, whether they still fit for me, or whether I have the impression that we should dive into the topic a bit more here, look at it, and quite specifically pull out examples from real life, to see how the whole thing develops mentally too, when we take such examples as support to check whether we can leave it as is, or maybe make corrections here too. So tomorrow at 8am German time, again here at Deep Talk, “Digital Campfire.” I’m looking forward to it, feel free to join, and I’m already very curious where we’ll end up at the end of the room tomorrow. Until then, take care. Ciao, ciao!
