Category: ENGLISH

“Everything is a tool that shapes thinking?” you might ask, “How is a cup a tool that shapes thinking?”.

This question can be answered with a simple thought experiment, that works for any thing or thought that has not been present at an earlier point in time.

The thought experiment goes like this:
Imagine what the world would look like, if a particular thing/thought has not been invented?

Thoughts build up on each other. Every thought builds up on previous thoughts just like every experience builds up on previous experiences. What goes for thoughts and experiences also goes for things. If one thing would not have been invented at one point in time, then all the consequential things would not have come into existence either. ( -> path dependence).

What does this mean for “cup”:
No cup, no way to store liquid, no way to store liquid, no way to store gas, no gas, no car. So without a cup we would live in a world without cars (and many other things that can be deep-liked back to the invention of the cup – which is: a lot!).

So everything that is here at the moment, everything that humanity currently has available, shapes our imagination and creativity to imagine possible futures, which is – of course – a first step to get there. And in those futures, the people in the future will imagine and come up with new things and thoughts. Things and thoughts that then again build the groundwork for future things and thoughts.

Just like in the past. When you look back at the past you can see how one thought is built on others and how thoughts branch off from on an other, just like an idea that has many implications, just like “no cup” “no car” and also “no cup”, “no coffee” in front of me, next to the computer on which I type these words. And most likely, “no cup” “no computer”, either and maybe not even the words, or at least far fewer words and certainly no typing, because most likely, without the invention of a cup, typing would not have been invented, either.

Let’s get off this rollercoaster of a thought experiment and get back to the comfort of our world now.

So what do you see, when you look through your eyes?

All the things you can see, can be put in one of two categories.

A) Things that you understand and B) things that you don’t understand.

And if you are like me (or most grown ups for that matter) there are far more things in front of you, that you understand, than you don’t understand. And understanding only means, that you are satisfied with the level of understanding, you have reached. The vacuum cleaner for example, that lies next to me (I need to clear it away at some point) –
of course I don’t understand on a deeper level how this vacuum cleaner functions, but I have a general understanding. I certainly don’t understand the details and I might not even know all it’s practical uses, but I am happy with my level of understanding. I don’t want to explore deeper. Only my attitude (not the thing itself) makes this vacuum cleaner part of my universe of things that I understand.

I treasure the things I don’t understand more. Other people for example, especially the ones who are close to me.

I understand that there are people that see this the opposite way. Some people seem to be happy to live in a world, they understand. Where they have reached a level of understanding they are fulfilled with. And nevertheless I can see the comfort this might have (for example there is far less doubt), I do not envy these people. I am a seeker, a researcher using scientific tools and methods to understand better.

Things shape thinking and thinking shapes things.
It is this feedback loop, that propels us humans forward.

from Edmund Carpenter „They Became What They Beheld“

Edmund Carpenter’s sentence sounds like a magic trick. How can you make something invisible in plain sight?

The cliché is the derivative of an original and the original was at some point reality, the world out there, in all its complexity. The original contains the infinity of possible choices that the cliché lacks. Just as a photographic image one looks at is always a retrospective, a glimpse of the image taken at the moment of the moment, a snapshot from the past.

When I look at a picture of me from the past – the possibilities I had then! I could have gone in any direction. And then I went in one direction. And now I’m 49 years old, living as an artist in Berlin, with a job in Switzerland. I could have gone in all kinds of directions, and that includes staying in a small town in Bavaria, like my siblings. Then I would probably still be thinking small-town thoughts today, much like I used to think them.

I would like to ask you to imagine, to visualize this person I am now. An artist who grew up in a small town, went to the big city as a young man and achieved some but not too much success. Imagine this person – that’s me.

That’s a cliché. The image you have in your head now, of an artist, 49 years old, who has gone from small town to big city and from there to places all over the world.

That’s all you need to know about me.

Just maybe this much: You have no idea who I am. You wouldn’t even recognize me on the street and even if you did, you still wouldn’t have a clue who I am.

You have no idea who I am – I don’t know myself. Who am I, who will I be tomorrow, where am I, where will I be tomorrow, in two years?

If you don’t ask yourself these questions, or can answer them easily, then you probably still are in a small town or have returned there, if only in spirit.

I am: just as complex as you are.

You are as complex as you are at this moment, as complex as I am, as complex as any human being. No matter where you live, whether as an artist in Berlin or as a florist in a small town in Bavaria or as a hunter-gatherer in Papua New Guinea.

Take another look at the cliché you have of me in your head.

Can any cliché ever capture all the complexity?

You think you know who I am because you have a cliché in your head, an image and behind that image I can hide. I can become like invisible. What you, what others see, is the cliché, not me.

This also explains an age-old question I carry with me from the small town: why is it so important what the neighbours think?

In the small town, I watched people constantly working on the cliché (the image the neighbours have of you). They literally worked on it, for example by “sweeping the street in front of the house because of the neighbours”. (“Small World”, 1997, begins precisely with this, “Planet Galata”, 2010, with a similar thought).

They don’t do that in Berlin. Here there is a road service that everyone pays for together, through their taxes. Now, even in Berlin, we sometimes sweep the street in front of our house. But that’s only because my wife happens to have a shop. In any case, we don’t do it because of the neighbours.

In a small town, the cliché is obviously more important, maybe because you have to hide more. In the big city it’s easier to show yourself as you are because you’re anonymous. You appear briefly and disappear again into the masses. You can’t do that in a small town.

In a small town, you can only be who you are if you hide behind high hedges. Behind the high hedges of the cliché. The high hedges are the image that others have of you. Working on your own image is working on the hedge behind which you can make yourself invisible. This is true not only, of course, but especially in small towns. Just about everyone uses this magic trick in one way or another – consciously or unconsciously.

But with the magic trick comes a curse. Two curses, to be precise.

The first curse:
You are only invisible as long as you stay behind your hedge. Today I’m quite happy with my cliché of the artist in Berlin. I can hide behind it perfectly well. In the past, however, I tried a different cliché: young start-up. That was rather uncomfortable, because I was constantly afraid that people would find out about me, that they would look behind the scenery, that the hedge would practically fall down.

But the real curse is another:
It is a cruel exercise to have the feeling of having to hide all the time. This feeling makes one unfree to a great extent. Unfree, if at some point you no longer dare to come out from behind the hedge. You are then tied to your hedge. And probably for life. The only life you have.

Is that what you want? To be tied down by the image others have of you?

There is something fascinating happening at the moment. It is the debate about Facebook. However, it is about something quite different than the question of whether Facebook is good or bad or even whether the new communication media are good or bad in themselves.

We can currently observe an important step in the development of the new communication media. It’s just not that obvious, because this process is being negotiated by people who speak as if it were a question of good or bad. Sometimes it sounds as if the new communication media have reached a point where they may not be able to carry on. As if the downfall of Facebook or something is imminent. The way it is reported, one could get the impression that the system is on the verge of collapse. This is not the case. In the hearings that take place in the US Senate, for example, the example of the tobacco industry is referred to again and again, where a branch of industry knowingly accepted the suffering of millions of people in order to make a profit. Even if the comparison is obvious, it is not particularly helpful, because unlike the consumption of cigarettes, the negative effects of the consumption of new communication media are offset by much more and much stronger positive effects. What is true for the new communication media as a whole is probably even true for Facebook itself.

FB is not as bad as most can surely understand if they are willing to follow the following reasoning:

The negative effects of FB are offset by many positive ones. I think anyone who uses FB can see that. Who uses FB despite everything that most have to criticise about FB. So what is to be criticised is counterbalanced by something else. And for most people (all those who continue to use FB) this thing is bigger than everything that is admittedly negative about FB. And this thing that stands opposite the negative is the positive that FB has.

Of course, it could go badly for FB and FB will be broken up in the course of the discussion. But that would certainly be the most dramatic thing that could happen. The long-term trend that the new communication media are becoming more and more important will not change at all.

What we can observe is simply how, with a large share of the public, mistakes in the system of the new communication media are being illuminated and the prerequisites for correcting these mistakes are being created. No more, but also no less.