Riding the Storm

I have to change my life

instructions on the correct wearing of dashcams
(conclusion)

The story here is that something has to happen...

"You must change your life" is a 2009 book by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who appeals to his readers "You have to change your life" and thus develops a new term: anthropotechnics

"Peter Sloterdijk's imperative promises a better life and a better world, but requires the individual to constantly work on himself. In his great investigation into the nature of man, Peter Sloterdijk combines gymnastics of will and excellence into an enjoyably instructive read about the exercises it takes to be and remain human."
This is the succinct summary from Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009.

Sloterdijk's book is about the forces with which man shapes himself. But the author considers the ability and willingness to do so a virtue. He calls it "vertical tension", which makes a person rise above himself. This vertical tension spurs the human being on to achievement that goes beyond mere existence.

The central consideration is that the human being - as a lifelong practitioner - creates himself in practising. It is a constant work of the human being on himself - for the betterment of the individual as well as the world.

Listen agian: Riders on the strom from the Doors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2-FPlvY58

This is an ai text-to-image: Vertical tension. One image in this column is not an ai picture. Which one?

It is important to realise: We are the riders of the storm. We, the eager consumers chasing the dreams of others.

This individual overconsumption, the search for one's own "I", the alienation of society and now the realisation that the individual contributes to the whole - this has made the image of the distant rider disappear.
Now we have to live with the dashcam.

Please listen:

...this audio was another short excerpt of The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee (2009)

As repeatedly hinted at in the previous pages: perhaps what is needed first of all is a resistance against oneself. It needs the realisation of the individual that there is no need for a brave rider in the distant storm to save the whole misery.
It takes the realisation that each individual, through their daily, small behaviour, is causing this current, global turmoil.
I'll get it done - but this time I'm not meeting the demands of a few, I'm committing to everything.
Everything, that is, to the underpaid workers in third countries, to the rubbish I create every day, to the birds and insects and and and....

So it is the individual who forms the big whole with the others. As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Many weak links make a chain unusable.

More text-to-image pictures - for your entertainment:

...and the question of the killer has not been solved either...

Now, 50 years later, this figure of the rider who bravely faces the storm can no longer be found.
Not that there are no more heroes, as already mentioned in another passage. But it has become difficult with this heroism, because actually one no longer knows where exactly one could start, with one's own courage.

Absurdly, one's own search for meaning decreased to the same extent as the categories of attributions offered increased. It was this "individualisation of all conditions - of life, of work, of unhappiness" or "The personalisation of the mass". This is how the Invisible Committee paraphrased a process of "we have become the representatives of ourselves".

Or as Debord and all the others before him also recognised: The alienation is now completed. The individual does what the alien dreams and desires demand.

The authors of "The Coming Insurrection" describe it even more precisely:
... "what prostheses it takes to hold an ego together! If "society" had not become this definitive abstraction, it would denote all the existential crutches that are handed to me so that I can drag myself along, all the dependencies that I have entered into at the price of my identity."

The choice is huge - of identities.
And you can switch between "user", "friend" and "member" with a flick of your wrist on your smartphone. And that makes it even easier to avoid your own responsibility in this (offered) anonymity.

But whether one can escape responsibility or not, one knows it: each and every one of us is partly to blame for this global crisis...
The romance is gone. Long live the dashcam (which is to be seen as a shortening of the selfie stick). At least one is left with one's own view of oneself. And so it goes on with this own glance at oneself. The storm has become unimportant and thus any indignation that would be necessary is extinguished.

As long as one can occupy oneself with this hypothesis of the "I", what resistance is needed. Well, sure. It would need resistance against sch itself.

...and again: the question of the killer has not been solved either...

Resistance begins with the individual. These small, daily refusals of the individual make themselves felt when many do the same.
Resistance requires individual choices in daily life.

Resistance as a collective process
Pierre Bourdieu defined resistance in quite practical terms: Resistance arises when competitive struggles are overcome in favour of struggles that challenge the dominant order: by real, effectively mobilised forces, practical classes that begin to act collectively and publicly.

...but for that, as an individual, you need a binding connection to a "we"...

A brief word about heroes:

Heroes have abdicated, so they say, but the need for characters with role model character still exists. And we can find them on demand on our smartphones. Today they are called influencers. They haven't done anything heroic, and they have no intention of doing so. Yet they are accepted as worthy of emulation.

The question of who or what is a hero is difficult to answer today. Especially in Germany. Because Germany and heroes - that was a problematic combination after the Second World War.

Nevertheless, there is no shortage of heroes, because you meet them everywhere: a DIY store names hard-working employees "Hero of the Week", footballers become "Heroes of the Quarter Finals" and some musicians are called "Heroes of Pop".
So they still exist - the heroes. So today everyone is a hero, if only they manage to step into the public eye.

In the past, a hero was only someone who sacrificed himself for an idea, a higher goal or the community.
This word "hero" no longer has any meaning in everyday language. Which is not so dramatic at first, because the classic role of the hero is male, ruthless and aggressive.

And that leads to the figure of the barbarian as a modern cultural hero. The entertainment industry shows it - we are still amusing ourselves to death....
It is precisely the cliché of the barbarian's lack of culture that can be fascinating, because the barbarian hits the nail on the head with his refusal of cultural civilisation: down with the monosyllabicity of bourgoisie - even if it officially no longer exists.

So the question of resistance is also a question of heroism, is it not?

The story here is that something has to happen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2-FPlvY58

So it is the individual who forms the big whole with the others. As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Many weak links make a chain unusable.

...and the question of the killer has not been solved either...

...and again: the question of the killer has not been solved either...

A brief word about heroes:

See again all pages: