#824 With Respect & Tolerance to Insight

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What significance do respect and tolerance have for gaining insight? That’s the question we explore in Room #824 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 to you all, and welcome to today’s topic: with respect and tolerance to insight. Over the last few days we’ve picked up various aspects — dialogue, for instance, and then listening — and so today we’re building on that with this aspect of respect and tolerance on the way to insight, and we want to look at what significance respect, appreciation, tolerance and aspects like that ultimately have for understanding one another and for gaining insight. I’m curious what other terms might come up along the way. Yesterday we already had the keyword “meeting at eye level” in the mix, and meeting each other at eye level is an aspect that already came up in the dialogue session, and came up again yesterday, so I’d like to pick it up again today. What does it have to do with the fact that it might pave the way to insight or to gaining insight, for me or for the other person? That’s what I’d like to talk with you about today. So you’re all very warmly invited to join in again, to open this space for reflection together with me, to step into a dialogue, so that we have different perspectives — ideally several people, because the more perspectives come in, the more viewpoints we get, and the more varied and many-faceted our space for reflection becomes. And a reminder again at this point that a recording is running in the background, so if you join, you’re agreeing that it will accordingly be published and made accessible to others afterward. And then we have three small room rules for anyone who wants to join: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. And for anyone who doesn’t want to do that for whatever reason, or who wants to stay anonymous, you’re welcome to keep using the chat instead, so that I can pick up one contribution or another from there too. So, with that the room is open for today, so to speak. Let’s see who wants to join first. Remember not to let too much time pass, so that we can get started right away. In the meantime I’ll mute myself briefly and wait to see who wants to come up first.

A very warm good morning, dear Marc. What do you have to say about this?

Good morning to the whole round. I first had to check that my headphones were actually connected. Yes, I’d like to bring in a new word, dear Yasemin, and give an example for it right away: respect, and respect and tolerance and trust. I’ve noticed in myself, from an entrepreneur’s perspective — and this is how insurance works too — that we do business, and prefer to deal with, people we trust. I bring in the word trust because we already had an example in your room recently, when we talked about getting into a confrontation with Nazis, and I think we don’t even need to discuss it, we probably wouldn’t trust someone like that, and maybe that’s an aspect worth touching on too. But let me finish my example. Respect and insight and trust. When I went self-employed, I naturally listened to the advice of people who were very close to me. My father was one of them. And because I trusted him, I didn’t question what he told me — and this happens when we take out insurance too — why would I question it? I save time, I save energy. And this is a person who only wants the best for me, so I trust him. And that trust really cost me tens of thousands, at least a five-figure euro amount. Not because my father meant badly by me, but simply because he wasn’t an expert in the matter I’d asked him about. The background is: I import goods from China and naturally need a freight forwarder for that. I was so happy that someone I trusted put me in touch with what I thought was a great freight forwarder — except he didn’t actually know the forwarder himself, he just knew that a large corporation with lots and lots of branches worked with this forwarder. And my brain said, well, if a company that size works with them, they must be good, and if they’re good for a big company, they must be good for me too. Maybe he gave them different prices, I don’t know the background. At some point during my time as an entrepreneur I realized that I was paying double the usual freight rate with this forwarder. He didn’t mean any harm either, he didn’t cheat me — he simply got the price he got from me out of my own ignorance. And that ignorance came from the fact that I trusted someone and didn’t question it. And now I come back to respect, tolerance and insight. I notice this in how I deal with people, and you’ll probably recognize it too — when we reject someone. It’s easiest to imagine this with someone who holds a completely opposite political opinion to ours, or someone who looks completely different — certain beliefs kick in, and when we meet people like that we don’t necessarily trust them. When it comes to professional matters, I’ve trained myself out of switching on feelings, because for me the only question that matters is: does this person have information that’s useful to me? Not do I like them, are they likeable to me, but does this person have information that could be useful to me, can I learn something from this person, and then I go into exchange with them. That’s easier for me in a professional context than in a private one, because of course there are groups I reject privately too — and yet, and this is probably also what we’re talking about today, coming to insight through respect and tolerance. If I don’t feel comfortable in an environment, I don’t even enter into exchange in the first place, so of course I never understand what the other person thinks or why they think that way, and I never arrive at new insights either, because often I reject new insights outright, simply because it’s not my world, I don’t want anything to do with it. And that can of course have fatal consequences for me too in the future, because if I don’t recognise certain political currents or certain social developments, they still exist regardless of whether I look at them or not.

Wonderful, thank you so, so much, and there were really two levels in what you just said — on the one hand this aspect you mentioned last, taking feelings out of a context, so to speak, looking at what it actually gets me, in quotation marks, rather than going into the emotional evaluation of how I personally find the person standing in front of me, but instead entering into exchange on the factual level. And on the other hand, that first example you brought, where in this case it was your father, or someone close and familiar — it could be someone else too — where there’s a bond, a relationship, where we have a certain trust. And in this concrete example you brought up, that trust led you to follow the advice, so to speak, or to adopt certain things this person did into your business without questioning them, which ultimately cost you money. Tuition money, so to speak, in that sense. And I find that totally fascinating in this context too. Meaning that this aspect of respect, tolerance, trust — especially when we bring trust into it — did ultimately lead to an insight, adopting it and following it and then at some point realising, maybe that wasn’t so great after all. And that it becomes especially clear here that it might also lead to a — in quotation marks — painful insight in that context, or that it might later require a correction, I find that a really, really fascinating aspect that you’ve opened up here too. Thank you, thank you so much for that. Layla, a very warm good morning. What do you have to say on this topic?

A very warm good morning. Yes, listening to Marc’s story, it reminded me of my own life and of my parents, for whom I have a very, very great respect. And I know what it’s like when people tell you things. I think this is good for you, or do it this way or that way. And that’s not just something you get from your parents, you also get it from people you respect, people you value. And their opinion carries weight. And my father’s and my mother’s opinions carry a great deal of weight with me. And that doesn’t mean that when my father tells me something — and I have to say, in the meantime, hello to my mum and dad — I actually call them quite often now and say, I just wanted to tell you, you were right. Because you also go through a phase of pulling away and pushing back, saying, no, I’m going to do it exactly like this, not the way you’re telling me to. Even if it’s the right thing, I won’t do it the way you say. And sometimes I call home and say, I just wanted to say, you were right. And I think that’s actually rather nice for my parents too, and also a sign of respect. And still, I agree with Marc that people surely mean well. And you can apply that to yourself too. When I give my little sister — and “little” means she’s over 30 — a piece of advice, I mean it well. We have a relationship, I’m the big sister, she’s the little sister. She always wants me to say “younger sister” now rather than “little sister,” so that this authority relationship you maybe had when you were young doesn’t just get carried over into the present, because you are still a little bound to your old patterns. And I notice that too — I mean well, I know better, I give you advice, and then we’re in the territory of unsolicited advice, and the question is, is it good advice for me based on my own life? It might well be good advice for her too. And still, it’s her decision. And you should be careful whom you ask for advice, I once heard, because in the end you get a lot of opinions. And the question is, what do I actually draw on for my own decision-making? What matters here? And now Marc said something about switching off feelings, or I’m probably not paraphrasing it quite right. For me it’s simply about putting feelings a little into the background first and then thinking about which factors I’m actually for or against something on. There are people I don’t even like who might give me advice that’s really good. And here it’s important to set emotions aside. I wouldn’t switch them off or eliminate them, and Marc didn’t say that either — I’m reading that into it now, in the sense that I’m the one making that judgement, that feelings are good or bad. And I’m a friend of feelings. They just shouldn’t be what leads me to decisions that aren’t good for me, because I don’t like someone, or because I’m in some kind of dependency, or because I want to show “those up there” something — and you could apply that to the big sister too, wanting to show “those up there” something, I’ll do exactly this, but not the way you say. And if it’s good for me, I won’t do it the way you tell me. And, yes, that you really stay with the decision itself and not with the factors that influence it, like feelings, or “I don’t like you,” “I like you,” and that it’s important to also have tolerance toward that — toward yourself too.

Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And exactly this respect, tolerance, meeting at eye level, these are aspects for me too. I’m curious what you have to say about it, just to open my own ear first, so to speak, in the sense of, I’m also listening to what the other person says. And quite independent of whether I have a relationship of trust with them or whether it’s someone I don’t know especially well, it’s about having a basis for meeting at all in the first place. And depending on what it’s about — and especially since advice and things like that have been mentioned here — it can be advice, it can also be completely different contexts, it’s always worth remembering that an encounter represents a reciprocal relationship. That means that through this togetherness — and we already opened this up during the dialogue session — for a conversation to become a dialogue, this thought that the reciprocal relationship plays a really important role too. Because the moment I approach the person opposite me openly, respectfully, tolerantly, so to speak, I also have the chance to get to a certain depth, in quotation marks, on the topic we’re talking about. That could be a piece of advice, it could simply be a chosen topic of conversation. And through this exchange that then takes place on that level, I might listen to the other person in a completely different way, because of my own openness and open-mindedness, and through this respectful or tolerant manner — which can express itself in language, for instance — I also have an influence on steering and guiding that conversation in a certain direction. And in this context I’d like to pick something up as an impulse, and I’m curious what you have to say about it. I think it becomes more tangible if we add a few more examples on top of this. Especially in a seminar context, for instance, I experience this very often, that experts, for example, feel like they always have to know more than everyone else and have to be able to answer every question. The trainer, for example, that’s a really classic case. And so this drive toward perfectionism, so to speak. But basically I can’t know everything. And there will always be something where maybe a question can’t be answered, or something like that. So here too, with a certain ease, I’d say, or lightness, to simply accept that — and I find it totally fascinating what you said about that, Layla, that you can also learn quite a bit from students. So not going in with the attitude that, in quotation marks, I already know it, but instead always keeping in mind that especially in this exchange, in this reciprocity that’s always present, especially in learning processes, that it always represents a reciprocal relationship on different levels for both sides too. That means it’s not the expert who knows and can do everything, or the consultant who knows and can do everything, the teacher, the trainer — you could open up all kinds of examples here — but rather that through this reciprocal relationship, through this respectful and tolerant way of dealing with one another, insights can arise on both sides in exchange, not just on one side but on both, both in oneself and in the person opposite. And yet I keep noticing that people often find it hard to accept that in the first place, or to realise it, then accept it, and really let go here. What do you have to say about that?

I wanted to wait and see whether Marc wanted to say something first, because my own contribution would be a bit longer. Then I’m glad Andreas is with us — good morning, Andreas, I’ll gladly let you go first.

Wonderful, that would actually have been my suggestion too at this point — to bring Andreas in, since he raised his hand directly, and then to Layla afterward.

Good morning, everyone, dear all. Yes, thank you. It’s actually something I notice on all my school visits, and it’s also the feedback I get from teachers, that the perspective that develops through the collaboration, and through a sudden openness because a third person is in the classroom, often gives teachers real insight into the fact that young people can do a huge amount — it’s just that, often, in the moment, it isn’t things that a society, or teachers, or other people consider right or important. And I think that’s actually a really, really great point in itself. I have an example too, maybe, especially on the topic of respect and tolerance. There was a student who asked me, quite honestly, how can it be that a young woman goes out onto the street because she’s standing up for the idea that agreements adults have made on climate and the environment should actually be kept, and this woman gets treated disrespectfully by adults, gets torn apart, gets destroyed — and the very same adults who tear this young woman apart are suddenly completely shocked when young people, students for example, get bullied and treated disrespectfully in schools, right up to being driven to suicide. How fascinating, then, the question of perspective and tolerance toward oneself is.

Thank you, thank you so much. Marc, Layla, did you want to comment on that first, or Layla, do you want to go straight into your example? Maybe it fits in with this to some extent too.

So, Andreas, what you’re saying, how can that be — I always say respect is not a one-way street. And I mean that exactly the way I’m saying it. And that applies to young people and it applies to adults too. Adults have been carving “the youth of today is spoiled and hooked on abundance somehow” into stone tablets since forever. I actually wrote my qualifying thesis on that. I studied ethics. I’m a big fan of philosophising with children. And funnily enough, yesterday I did exactly that — I sat down, because it was still very loud in the class, and sometimes lessons run long, and I’d had a lot of disciplining to do, and I said, you know what, I’m just going to sit down now and do it the way Tina said. And then they look at me, and I say, well, Tina is a first-grader. She explained to me that when a class is loud, I should be quiet. And of course I learned that in my teacher training. But she reminded me of it again, and she’s in first grade, and I learned it at university. I mean, that’s actually pretty clever for a first-grader. So I sat down and I was quiet. And in that context — I keep repeating this — a sixth-grader once asked me, do you really let a first-grader tell you what to do? And I said, yes, because you can learn something from everyone. And I notice that again and again. I see it too when students write essays, or in ethics class, where we do all sorts of things. One student told me, “You know, I’m sitting on the underground and I’m sitting in a seat, there are lots of free seats, and then three adults come in, or four, and sit down in the seats and tell me, a fifth-grader — that’s 5 plus 6 is 11 — ‘Stand up!’” And he didn’t want to stand up. And he told me, next time I won’t do it, Mrs Belaid. And I understood why he didn’t want to do that, because it was rude — on the part of the adults. And when a young person is blocking a door on the underground because he wants to make a joke, and an older gentleman comes up to him — I was there for this — and says to him, “You idiot, cut it out!” — then I looked at him and I stood up, because that was one of my students, and I said, excuse me, could you please, I don’t mean this the wrong way, could you please speak to him differently. Do you even know him? And I said, yes, he’s one of my students. Well then you must be a great teacher. And I said, yes, I am. And he’s a great student. Then I sat back down, and the two of them kept grumbling to themselves a bit and then somehow got talking about the school system, the two older gentlemen. And I noticed then that sometimes children and older people are allowed to get away with almost anything. But that doesn’t entitle them to it. And at some point it got a bit much for me too. I stood up, I didn’t say anything more, and I went and stood with some other students, because a lot of my students ride that particular underground line, myself included. And I worked through the example with them afterward too. And then they looked at me too, the students standing next to me, and said, “Why didn’t you say anything just now?” And I said, now think about it, why did I stand up and not say anything? And I just waited for an answer, because great answers might come from you too. Or rather, they definitely will, because children, teenagers, come up with brilliant ideas. Because, Yasemin, you once told me about those images, where we talked about having certain images for happiness and this and that. And I thought about that too, yes, and we’re imposing that on them. But when you philosophise with children, you notice they don’t have nearly as many filters. And my students said they wanted to avoid the argument, they wanted to be a good example for us, they didn’t want to get into a fight with those men. And I said, exactly. And they figured that out themselves, I didn’t tell them that. And that’s why in ethics class you have to ask good questions to get good answers. And I think respect is not a one-way street. That applies to students in the sense that, of course, you’re often very aware of your rights and not so aware of your duties. That applies to adults too, they’re often very aware of their rights and not so aware of their duties. And respect is a duty toward the other person. And respect means treating them the way I’d like to be treated myself. And I don’t call anyone an idiot. I don’t say this or that to anyone. I don’t tell anyone, you’re old, so you don’t know that. If we take the older generation, and the younger generation looks at them and thinks, well, they’re totally out of touch. And it doesn’t work the other way round either, saying, well, you don’t even know things like books anymore, for you it’s all cramming and forgetting. Yes, and they have TikTok, and they have Instagram, and they have all sorts of options, and they have access, and they think differently. And we should orient ourselves to that. And of course there’s a huge dopamine release involved. And you have to adjust to that in school too, you need very, very short videos. Because if I tell them, I’ve got a six-minute video for you, they look at me and go, six minutes? Are you serious? And I say, yes, dead serious. Because they’re used to one-minute clips, and used to that dopamine hit. So I have to adjust to that too. And, yes, to sum up, I really do think respect is not a one-way street. That applies to both sides. And I think, when you were talking earlier about that seminar-leadership example, it really is this thing — as a teacher, sometimes you’re just one lesson ahead, because you also have to work your way into a subject. But often expertise is understood to mean knowing everything. And there’s a saying among teachers: I don’t have to know everything, I just have to know where it’s written down. If I know where it’s written, I’ll read it, and I’ll normally work it out for myself, and I won’t just say it off the cuff, I’ll get the background knowledge too, so I can convey it properly. But this “I have expertise,” and it’s so often thirty against one, people say things like teachers have it easy in the morning and are off by lunchtime. You’re a teacher, aren’t you — I get pinned down with that constantly. Or a female teacher, you can pick which one, I don’t really hang on to the gendered form, that’s not so important to me, what matters to me professionally is being a teacher. And I think that’s true in other professions too, that expertise is so often understood as perfectionism. Then you fall into that, and you get scared of doing something wrong. And then you start saying things like “the teacher is always right,” and if the second rule is, if he’s not right, then rule one automatically applies. Because, yes, you’re often pinned down to that, and in society too — I know it so well, how often I’m a projection surface for other people’s childhoods, and how often I get told, you’re a civil servant, you can’t get a paper cut, and I worked so incredibly hard to get where I am now. I went through three different schools, then a degree that I financed myself. I’m still paying off my student loan. And that’s why — and I can’t tell that story to everyone — I’ve become more lenient with others in the meantime. And that surely exists in other professions too. Thanks for listening.

Yes, wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much. And I’d like to pick up this aspect, respect is not a one-way street. It really does run in both directions here. And that also means, in this context, that we’re allowed to look at our own contribution here too. And I want to underline that again, because we often expect, in quotation marks, respect and tolerance from the person opposite us. So if I were to say respect and tolerance are important, most people would nod along at that point. And we expect it, and we maybe also try, ourselves, to meet other people with respect and tolerance to some degree, along the lines of, I treat other people the way I myself am treated. And yet, we also quite unconsciously and quite quickly fall into various traps here ourselves. And I’d like to look in that direction now too, and pick up some examples perhaps. So, for instance, how often do we complain about group X, Y, Z, say, as a group of people — and since I can see Andreas up on stage right now, we could take Gen Z as an example group — we very often come across people getting annoyed about that behaviour, or however you want to put it, and forming an opinion about it, and speaking about a certain group of people in a generalised way. And here you could already ask yourself, how respectful or tolerant is that, actually? And really go in with that questioning, to question one’s own statements made about topics, contexts, and groups of people. And I’d like to pick something up from the chat here too. Some things have already come in there. That might give some further impulses for the conversation. And then I’d like to give you the chance to add to that too. On the one hand, there was the question, is there a point up to which one should tolerate something, or does tolerance have no limits? And one answer to that from the chat was, the famous “no tolerance for the intolerant” would be my limit. And then there was a note about the paradox of tolerance, with a quote on it: “Less well known is the paradox of tolerance. Unlimited tolerance must necessarily lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to the intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” And then another question on top of that: yes, but what does that actually mean? Because it’s always a matter of one’s own point of view, who decides who’s tolerant or intolerant. That’s exactly the crux of it. So, do I have to override my own needs in order to be tolerant — that’s a follow-up question that connects to it. And now I’m curious what thoughts are going through your minds and what you have to say about it. Marc, Layla, Andreas — Layla, go ahead.

I wanted to briefly pick up on something you said. You said — and this might have been a bit of a Freudian slip — that you treat the other person the way you’re treated. And I think that’s a really open point, not the way I want to be treated, but the way I actually am treated. And people pass that on quite often. Why is it that teachers and other people who have expertise often do this sort of — well, I think it’s this competence-flaunting thing, this “by the way, I have this, and I studied that, and look at this” kind of thing. And it’s often the case that boundaries get crossed that way. Boundaries get crossed so often in everyday life, whether you’re standing at the checkout or wherever — I don’t know. I often say, because I’ve only known for four years that I have MS. And you can’t tell by looking at me that I have a severe disability. So often I’ve been snapped at for not being able to go faster, because sometimes, like an elderly lady, I have to fumble around gathering up my change, because I have spasticity or something similar, and I just think, wow — and then I treat other people that way too, or hold it up like a shield in front of me. And sometimes tolerance really does mean putting your own needs a bit into the background, so to speak — yes, I don’t know, your own sense of respect for yourself. I actually have a nice example for this. Something that happened to me once — there was a fellow teacher, a colleague, I’ll keep it anonymous, and this person said, “Ugh, and now we’re supposed to write a class test, and it lands right on Bayram.” “Oh, how annoying, it’s Bayram now.” “That really bothers me, because a lot of students probably won’t even be there.” And inside I thought, you’re discussing this right now with someone, I’m sitting right here, I’m Muslim, this is my Christmas, so to speak. And you’re saying right now that it annoys you. I understand the reasons why it annoys you, because you can’t schedule your class test on that day. But there’s a kind of international calendar you can check to see when international holidays fall. And I felt annoyed, and actually I would have wished for a bit more respect, toward me too, and toward this holiday, because our constitution states freedom of belief and all of that. Because in my head I had civil servant, civil servants’ concerns. And then I thought it over and decided, no, I’m not going to say anything now. Because I could give a whole lecture about how we could flip the whole thing around and imagine, say we mostly had Muslim students, and then we had a few students who celebrate Christmas. And then someone would say, oh, the 24th, what a great date for a class test. I didn’t even think about it, and now there’s a class test on that day. Christmas really annoys me. And I thought, I could do that, it would probably be instructive too, but it probably wouldn’t move our communication forward. And I also don’t know whether you’d see me as difficult even though I’m right — let’s just say I’m right here. And I also felt that my own boundary had been crossed, because I was sitting, or was part of, that group of colleagues, and it was no secret, nothing that was under some kind of seal of confidentiality — your faith, in this case, is something you can mention if you’re asked. It’s not something I have to keep hidden. And yet I let my tolerance override that, I thought, no. On the one hand I had reasons related to communication and the relationship, where I thought the relationship between colleagues mattered more to me. And you can always consider whether to bring it up again later. And still, in the name of tolerance, I let my own boundary get crossed, because this is the most important holiday we have in Islam. And, yes, I think that’s an example that might fit here. I’m curious what you have to say about it.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And that’s a really, really fascinating example to bring up in this context. And it connects right into this point — I’m fairly certain, or I could very well imagine, that the person themselves wasn’t even aware of it, because the reflection behind it was simply missing. And if you went into exchange with them and explained it exactly the way you just did here in the room, I could well imagine that the person might even be a little shocked at themselves in that moment, and would nod and say, yes, basically you’re right, I hadn’t even thought about it that way. And that shows that — we already said this — human beings are emotional. That means we do a lot of things impulsively, in the moment, so to speak, without necessarily thinking it through, because we simply haven’t reflected on it for ourselves in that context. And if we haven’t engaged with a topic intensively enough from various different perspectives, our thoughts on it might not be very ordered yet, or we haven’t gained new viewpoints, or something similar, so that we then also have the opportunity to look at it from a different perspective. And I find this impulsiveness especially interesting in personal encounters, even if it’s just a brief encounter, like the one on the underground you told us about earlier, unfortunately, with that older gentleman and the child, the student, that you observed. Those are often the kinds of encounters we have, for example, brief moments in a supermarket, brief moments on the underground, somewhere on the street, where we run into people, where something happens briefly that triggers some kind of impulsive reaction. And then we’re pretty quickly into judgement mode too. And I also loved that you picked up on that with the Freudian slip. I think it’s wonderful that it happened. It immediately made me think of that saying too, how you shout into the forest, so it echoes back. You surely know that one. And that’s exactly why I think it’s so important, in this context, to get into what I’ll now call pattern-breaking. Because often what happens is that someone confronts us aggressively on the street with something, and what’s our reaction to that? Do we react aggressively back? Or do we, through deliberate and targeted training, through the reflection we’ve already done beforehand, in the sense of a respectful and tolerant way of dealing with one another, manage not to get worked up about it, in quotation marks, not to go straight into judgement — that wasn’t respectful, or that was intolerant, or whatever, and react accordingly — but instead consciously step into acting deliberately, into pattern-breaking, and think about what alternative ways of dealing with it there might be, because by reacting aggressively myself, I’m not making it any better, I might just be fuelling it further, in quotation marks, or simply giving in to the impulse, and even if it doesn’t turn into a longer conversation or anything like that, I might end up in a worse mood, in quotation marks, at least for the moment. And another way of dealing with it could of course be to say, yes, that maybe wasn’t what I understand as respectful or tolerant, what the other person just did. But that doesn’t mean I have to get drawn into it — I don’t have any direct way of changing the other person by telling them, what you’re doing right now isn’t okay. But the moment I control and change my own reaction to it, I do have the chance to indirectly influence the other person’s reaction too, so to speak. And there we are again with that saying, how you shout into the forest, so it echoes back. What thoughts does that bring up for you?

I’ve said this before, dear Andreas, I’ve learned so, so much from you on Clubhouse, which has really, really improved my relationship, and I’d like to bring a new word into the discussion, and that word is agreement. And Andreas always says, listen to understand, or listen to respond. I learned that last year. What’s much harder for me is listening to understand. I can manage the other part now too, listening not just to respond. And now I’m learning that listening and understanding doesn’t mean agreement. That means understanding, but understanding doesn’t automatically mean acceptance in the sense of agreement. And the second thing, which I think was Yasemin, was something that came up in the Authors’ Breakfast 007, where someone said that when we get annoyed, that means we’re poisoning our own body. And the word “Ärger” — annoyance, or anger — has hopefully burned itself into my mind now, along the lines of “poison.” And I take things as they are. That means, I don’t like them. And I don’t agree with them either. But I no longer let myself be poisoned by getting annoyed — instead I try to find a different way of dealing with it for myself. And that’s easier said than done. It really requires practice in real situations, and you have to keep reminding yourself of it. Because writing it down once isn’t enough for me, because these behaviours and these feelings that my body plays out, that my brain plays out, are so automatic. And this pattern-breaking, that’s the next word, dear Yasemin, that I now try really, really hard to call to mind, out of my subconscious into my conscious awareness, whenever I notice my body reacting in the old behaviour pattern — pattern-breaking. What could pattern-breaking look like for this example? Thank you for that word, dear Yasemin. That’s already the highlight for me in this room.

Yes, wonderful. Would anyone else like to add something? Go ahead, Andreas, and then Layla.

Yes, I’d actually like to add one more word while we’re at it. This is the thing that’s helped people the most who didn’t understand why, two years ago, I decided to give up a great salaried position as a trainer and go into schools instead, to listen to young people in order to understand them and carry that perspective back out into the world. It’s exactly this word: perspective. I believe that if we’re able to enable ourselves, at some point, to switch chairs — to take on a new perspective on certain situations — and to do that with respect, then a certain tolerance develops on its own. And I have so, so many insights that are terribly important for my own life, but that are also extremely important for the life of the people around me. You were there too, dear Yasemin, about a year ago, when we talked about this topic for the first time. How much scepticism there is throughout society as a whole. It’s honestly astonishing how many people close themselves off from simply switching perspective for a moment and thinking about what it does to a person to be born into this digitalisation, into maximum content, into the fact that you’re online four to ten hours a day and are, unfortunately, largely raised by social media these days, and that your beliefs and values are shaped by that above all — it’s so hard to accept that, because we all keep catching ourselves looking at our own past and using the results that came out of it to judge the future. And if I look at an analogue past and look at the results there, then I’m currently not going to find the future so great. But if I switch perspective now and imagine I’m a 20-year-old young person who only has a digital past, then I won’t be so afraid of the future anymore, and I can take on completely new perspectives. And I really do believe that’s also what matters, that we enable ourselves and open ourselves up to taking on new and different perspectives too. Simply listening in order to understand — what feeling does that create? What does this perspective look like, with the insights of young people? And then thinking about how we can do something about it together. And for that I need an incredible amount of respect. Respect from the other side, but also respect in the sense of simply being able to say, I have respect for the fact that young people today face completely different challenges than they used to. And that I let go of always drawing comparisons to my own past.

Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. Layla.

I was just thinking, because you said, Yasemin, that I’m in love with the German language, and you said a conversation isn’t always a dialogue, and, well, how does a conversation become a dialogue? I think that was one of your opening questions too, and then I thought about why that is. And I think the reason it isn’t a dialogue is that it’s often just a string of arguments, or combative rhetoric, where I first explain to the other person how the world works and how I feel — explain my own island, as Vera Birkenbihl put it — I think it’s because we all have this need to be heard. And I’m speaking of “we” now, meaning all people. We want to be heard, we want to be understood. And, well, we simply want that, and to do that we have to explain our own position. And then we’re so busy explaining our position, our arguments, our view, that we completely forget to also look at the other person’s view. And then it’s not a dialogue. And then the other person experiences that as disrespectful. And now I also have to defend the teacher who said that, from my example. She wasn’t even aware of it — she was thinking about her class test date. She didn’t check the calendar. We live in a country shaped by Christian tradition. That’s just how it is. I see it from my own perspective. That’s my island, because I’m a German-Tunisian whose mother was Protestant, which is exactly why I can understand that position more than well. And I also know why my little brother has a Christmas tree. And I know just as well what it’s like to celebrate Bayram. So the ability to switch perspective was practically put in my cradle, so to speak, and not in hers. And now I can be angry at her, or at him, and say, wow, how could you, how disrespectful. Or I can tolerate it and let my own boundaries be crossed, and think about how I could actually raise it. And I’ve just been thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to say, on Friday, that’s my Christmas, that’s my holiday. And that plants a seed. And you once said something really important to me, Yasemin, and I firmly believe this too, that when you say something, it keeps working in people afterward. And maybe it’s not a conscious “showing my perspective,” but a conscious “showing myself.” And because of that, a shift in perspective can happen, and it doesn’t become a confrontation. And maybe it becomes a dialogue, a conversation, and you can talk about, so what are you doing on that day? Because I’ll be visiting my family that day too. And, yes, I think that can be something nice, that also creates tolerance, and, yes, maybe pushes back against ignorance a little too — that not engaging with it at all. Thanks for listening.

Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and above all it’s really lovely, that phrasing you chose, “that’s my Christmas.” We often think in images, and I think it becomes more relatable for a lot of people, for example right here in this case, when we make a connection, a connection to the world that in this case belongs to the person opposite me, so to speak — establishing a link, so that this holiday is put on an equal footing with Christmas, which no one questions or debates. There are, of course, people who might not celebrate it in that particular form or expression — there are differences there too, of course — but nonetheless everyone can genuinely picture something under “Christmas,” and that’s why I find these kinds of connections between different worlds, through different images, really, really suited to actually creating images fairly quickly, without making a big fuss or reproach or anything like that, that can bring the other person into a moment of irritation, of afterthought, of really thinking it over — without even saying, hey, I’m taking that with me, interesting, or something like that. We don’t always have time for conversations like that, but small things like this can still have quite a powerful effect within a dialogue. We don’t know exactly what lands with the other person or anything like that. That’s also why repetition, for example, matters too. So this holds especially true for encounters like the ones in a staff room, for example, where you keep running into each other, again and again, maybe only briefly, but there are sentences that keep coming up, or examples that get picked up again, images that get opened up, that lead to something — if it’s heard the first time, maybe it’s heard again the second time, and so on, so that there’s also a chance here, so to speak, that a change can take place in perspective, in thinking, in attitude toward it. And now a whole lot of aspects have been raised. I’d like to briefly come back, to close, to a point in the chat too, regarding — yes, we very quickly get into discussing how far this goes, and there are limits, of course, and so on, and I don’t want to say that’s not justified. Yes, there are certainly limits too, and at the same time I’d like to point out again that we very quickly tend — and that’s typical of human beings, that’s simply how our brains are wired — to look very quickly at the negative aspects. And especially when it comes to how far this goes, we very quickly start talking about examples of violence or things like that. And here I’d like to raise awareness a little further. We’ve already talked a lot about this in various rooms. That means, children come into the world, and it already starts in pregnancy, that they absorb and process things epigenetically and through their environment, so to speak, sometimes without even realising that it’s being stored. Those are aspects that might later trigger them in the future without them knowing where it’s coming from. Then, I mean, no one would deny this, the family home plays a role, the one you grow up in, the environment, school plays a role later on, and so on and so forth. And especially when we talk about groups of people who maybe come from other countries and are meant to be socialised here, worlds naturally collide at first. Especially when these people don’t grow up here from birth, but grow up here later, having come from another country, regardless of which one. And now I want quite deliberately — the term already came up today, Marc, you brought up the word “Nazi” in between — I want to deliberately move away from that track and onto another one, namely right-wing extremism. And we do have right-wing extremists living in Germany, and — I found this really fascinating, I’d like to bring up this example — I think it was Stern TV, who followed one family, so to speak, over many years, checking in on how things developed. A family that’s genuinely thoroughly right-wing. And children were born into that family, of course, and grew up in a certain environment. And in some ways they simply don’t know anything else. And I find it dangerous, at this point, to say respect and tolerance, in quotation marks, end at the point where dot, dot, dot, whatever comes next for you. That’s individual too. That doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it in the sense that it shouldn’t be treated as a criminal offence, that it shouldn’t be sanctioned, and so on. And yet I find it difficult to say — if I only end up having to act with punishment, then that’s because I didn’t accompany the process beforehand, because I didn’t manage beforehand to break through certain belief patterns, because school didn’t work, and so on and so forth. So there are various influencing factors that have already failed beforehand, in a sense, before this situation even arises, before it comes to violence or something similar. I don’t want to say with this that school and so on has failed — blah blah blah — but rather that we have different components here, different influencing factors, and if we only look at the criminal act afterward and say, no, no, that’s just not okay, that’s fine, it should be punished, it should be punished — and at the same time, and we’ve talked about this too, prisons and so on, those aren’t a cure-all either. Then people get “locked away.” Nothing really happens there in terms of socialisation, or re-socialisation, which is actually meant to be the mandate, but that doesn’t happen in prisons, if you’ve looked into it more closely — instead it can even lead to people becoming even more criminal, because what happens when they get out and get excluded, and so on and so forth. That means, as a society, we’re allowed to keep working on our own thinking in many places, from my point of view, and to recognise that there’s a certain complexity to it too. And that’s not something you’re going to solve overnight with some great piece of advice or idea. But it does mean we can’t make it too easy for ourselves either. So, not just, well, once the line has been crossed, then there have to be sanctions or whatever, but instead always looking at what the influencing factors were along the way, and how we, as a society, can pitch in too, and what contribution I, as an individual, can personally make. Because the sum of individual contributions does add up to a real force in the end, so that it never even gets that far in the first place, or, if it has gotten that far, that’s where the aspect of pattern-breaking comes in again, so that new experiences can be made by the people affected, in order to be able to change their behaviour again. And when it moves into pathological territory, I’m not talking about that, that’s a completely different context again, then of course it requires appropriate external therapy or something similar, where people can find support too. But I think opening up these perspectives is really, really important too, because we tend to keep thinking in terms of right or wrong, leaving out all the facets in between, and thinking only in black-and-white, right-and-wrong constructs. But there are so, so many facets in the middle that also need to be taken into account, from my point of view. With that, I’d like to move into today’s closing round. You’re welcome to add to this if you’d like, and then go straight into your closing words in order — Marc, Layla, and Andreas, please.

Dear Yasemin, this is already going to be our topic this weekend on our walk. Thank you for your contribution, because when I talk to my partner, who’s a headteacher, of course it comes up sometimes that a child might have brought a knife to school. And the simplest reaction from colleagues is then that the child has to be removed from school immediately. And what you said, that it’s not just right and wrong, but that maybe some children can’t help it, or simply need attention, and so on — thank you for your contribution, this deserves a long discussion and follow-up. Thank you, thank you all so much.

Thank you, thank you so much, Layla.

Yes, I was just thinking, I’m going to quote two people now. First, Layla Belaid, meaning myself: respect is not a one-way street, although I’m sure that phrase has already been said by someone else before. I believe tolerance doesn’t mean I always have to let my own boundaries be crossed — that’s not tolerance to me, that’s, well, I don’t know, that’s me harming myself, and I shouldn’t harm myself, because if that happens over a long period, it’s not good for me or my self-worth, and it’s not good for anyone else either. Tolerance means enduring and putting up with things, and engaging with them beforehand. I don’t have to tolerate everything. No right-wing extremism, no left-wing extremism, no fanaticism of any kind. And there’s always a reason why things are the way they are. And I can look at that too, and maybe consider whether it might have an effect on a person if I simply say something. Because what the farmer doesn’t know, he won’t eat — that’s pretty blunt too. And still, if I have things around me, if I engage with things, then I have the opportunity to shift a perspective. And maybe not right away, but maybe it has an effect on someone afterward. And to close, I’d like to quote Yasemin Yazan. I’ll paraphrase her a little: don’t treat other people the way you are treated, but treat other people the way you would like to be treated. Thanks for listening.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Andreas.

First of all, thank you so much for the different perspectives, and I’d like to end with this sentence: young people are, at the end of the day, the result of influencing factors that come from the outside. No one made themselves who they are, so we’re allowed to judge less and think more instead about how we can jointly make sure, going forward, that people get educated and trained much earlier on topics that matter for life after school.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, thank you so much. And there’s one aspect, one keyword I’d noted down that I’d like to pick up on again too, because it was also about anger, among other things. I think it was, if I’m not mistaken, from Dieter Lange, and I thought this was so brilliant. He loves wordplay, and I love Dieter Lange for that. So if you don’t know him, you really have to look him up online. There are wonderful talks, videos and so on, posted online. And he once picked up this aspect: in German you say “Ich habe mich geärgert” — literally, “I annoyed myself.” So pay attention to the words we choose. “I annoyed myself.” And he basically points out, in this context, that it’s already right there in the sentence itself. “I annoyed myself.” That means I don’t let — it’s not that someone else annoys me, I let myself get annoyed. And I find that such a fascinating aspect. It came up earlier as an impulse too. I’d like to pick it up again here and underline it. So let that keep working on you too. We really do have a great deal in our own hands here, in how we deal with certain things, whether it’s about respect, about tolerance, about reactions, about pattern-breaking, and so on and so forth. In many places we have the chance to actually look much more at ourselves, to look within ourselves, to start with ourselves, and then let the power of that unfold outward, and the moment we do that, and concern ourselves less with what’s outside, and instead keep returning to ourselves, keep looking at our own contribution, keep asking what can I do, dot, dot, dot, then we find completely new possibilities and answers, and I think that’s something worth letting keep working on us too. And with that, I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, because tomorrow we continue with insight and empathy. And I think we’ve already opened up so many points today, and the term itself hasn’t even come up yet, but this aspect of empathy plays a really essential, major role in this whole process of gaining perspective and so on, from my point of view. And that’s why we’re going to build on today and continue this room tomorrow with insight and empathy, the significance of empathy and compassion for gaining insight. And so I’m looking forward to welcoming you all back here tomorrow at 8 o’clock. Thank you, thank you so much for joining in, both up on stage and in the chat. I thought there were wonderful contributions, wonderful examples, that made for a many-faceted room for us today. And so I’m really curious how things continue tomorrow. And you’re all warmly invited to join again tomorrow. With that, until then, and bye.