Riding the Storm

The Individual

(like a dog without a bone)

Resistance or emancipation? The Invisible Committee calls on us "not to use the weapon of criticism in the service of our own disarmament and not to let the struggle in the streets turn into a farewell to thinking about how we can hold on in the long run, because building autonomous structures is the necessary basis for any serious attack on this system."

Sources of courage

...on visibility listen again:

It is an act of invisibility to escape the prevailing geopolitical divide and constant surveillance. An act that stems from the invincible desire to follow free and unexpected paths beyond borders and oppressions. The desire to build one's own integrity as an autonomous individual and thus be able to build and protect society. This requires social bonds with other individuals and a free circulation of ideas that promote these notions of a free society.
Invisibility can be a more important tool than visibility. The use of invisibility is an active choice.

Critisism of feudalism a short detour into the past: The Sturm und Drang

Sturm und Drang, (German: "Storm and Stress"), German literary movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Goethe and Schiller began their careers as prominent members of the movement.

The Sturm und Drang rebelled against the ideals of the Enlightenment.
It existed before, this strong ego reference: it is the greatest characteristic of the Sturm und Drang.

The term Sturm und Drang (also geniezeit, genius period) refers to a literary epoch that can be dated to the years 1765 to 1790.
In the second half of the 18th century, philosophical and literary life in the German-speaking world was largely determined by the Enlightenment. The mind was the determining factor of the time, through whose free use, as Kant formulated in 1784, the "exit of man from his self-inflicted immaturity" was to be achieved. Literature should educate the reader morally, enlighten him and awaken his reason.

But the personality ideal of the young generation in German literature at the end of the 18th century turned against authority and tradition.
In place of a learnable poetics of rules that could be learned in poetry academies, the "young savages" placed the independence of the original genius, who brought his experience into an individual artistic form and dealt very freely with the rules of traditional poetics.
They doubted the relevance of the ratio and began to focus on the emotio.
The Sturm und Drang rebelled against their father's generation, turned against authority and tradition and regarded the individual as a god-like being.

They wanted to describe the world in such a way that this experienced attitude to life could be reflected. The focus was not on rationality, but on the individual and his or her emotions. The central motif of Erlebnislyrik is nature.
This literature was full of individual acts of liberation that went hand in hand with progressive secularisation.. The recurring theme in literature was the conflict of the natural genius, the role of the unruly youth striving for freedom, with the barriers of the existing world order.

It was the individual's demand for freedom and self-determination.
The cult of genius of the Sturm und Drang is most clearly evident in Goethe's hymn "Prometheus" from 1774. In this Epistolary novel, Prometheus criticises Zeus, the father of the gods, because they allow themselves to be worshipped by humans, but they are actually powerless - because this makes them dependent on humans:
"...
I know nothing poorer
under the sun than you, gods
..."

About dogs

The dog or domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) is a descendant of the wolf. It is believed that the dog was the first animal species to be domesticated by hunter-gatherers more than 15,000 years ago, before the development of agriculture.
Because of their long association with humans, dogs have evolved into a variety of dog breeds.
Dog have also acquired during this time the ability to cope with a starchy diet that would be inadequate for other canids.

But a bone remains a bone.

About the "we" and how this "we" is constantly changing

1. The game of the active intolerance

They say that dreams can be sources of inspiration that motivate us to change the circumstances of our lives. Similarly, storytelling and other approaches to narrative forms provide opportunities to examine and influence reality.

However, it is also said that the individual is always already involved in social contexts of thought, speech and action.
Only here, in these contexts, does the individual become a subject at all. Can dreams even assert themselves against this subjectification?

2. The dream of power

The dream of power is first of all the dream of a self-determined life.

Michel Foucault developed a concept of power in his theory and analysis of discourse and the production of knowledge. Discourse in Foucault's sense is a "linguistically produced context of meaning that forces (and produces) a certain idea. These ideas are in turn based (and produced) on certain power structures and interests.
For Foucault, the individual is neither a product of the Enlightenment nor the subject of autonomous economic action. The subject in Foucault's theory is in fact the object and product of a knowledge/power relationship.
The human being is already "in itself the result of a subjection" .

Someone else once said: Power is the term for a "complex strategic situation".

Within Foucault's theory of power, there can be no outside of power. This means that social movements and social struggles always move within power relations: "Where there is power, there is resistance. And yet, or rather because of this, resistance is never outside of power. Resistance, indignation, the desire for change of the individual is in this sense a part of power. This is a trap.

...riders on the storm - riders on the storm - into this house we're born - into this world we're thrown
like a dog without a bone - an actor out on loan - riders on the storm...

A small interruption. Here comes a note on the use of "we" in this work

Who can one mean when one writes "we". Here, too, a clear assignment/description is not possible. There are so many possibilities of identity. This "we" used here can only be an offer of "fraternisation" - and probably this concept of fraternisation must no longer exist. But how does one describe the process of attachment - and what is still binding today? And with whom?
We - that is at least everyone who at least has access to the internet and a computer and can afford the time and interest to read this article. "We" - these are all those who know terms and their discourse used here. "We" - that is all those who can order a caramel-flavoured latte macchiato at least somewhere nearby. "We" - that is the bad conscience and the need to think about the realisation and enforcement of resistance.

3. The power of powerlessness

It is the individualisation of all conditions - of life, of work, of unhappiness, that alienates and disempowers us. A powerful form of action is omission. Doing nothing becomes the most important act.

"We call on you to refrain from doing anything in your power!"
Bazon Brock , fluxus artist, Germany
(Quote from Action: Civilising Cultures, 2006-2009)

"Diffuse schizophrenia. Creeping depression. Atomisation into fine paranoid particles. Hysterisation of contact. The more I want to be me, the more I have a feeling of emptiness. The more I express myself, the more I dry up. The more I run after myself, the more exhausted I am. I run, you run, we run our "I" like a busy switch. We have become the agents of ourselves - this strange trade, the guarantors of a personalisation that ultimately resembles an amputation. In more or less hidden clumsiness, we make it to bankruptcy.
Until that happens, I manage, I get it done."
Excerpt from The invisible committee , The Coming Insurrection

4. This is the crisis of one's own paradigms

Our lives cannot go on as before, but we do not know what is coming. The confluence of these ecological, geopolitical and democratic crises is disturbing and frightening. Because we see these crises as one big Gordian knot - we see the crisis as a whole.

Of course, one is powerless against it the whole thing. So it would be advisable to tackle the things that directly affect you.
Make the small, individual decisions. The right ones ;)

An what if our thinking were receptive to complex temporal entanglements and interdependencies? In this temporality, imagination and change would each be essential components of a present that would no longer be hindered by the inert debris of the past, but where the knowledge of the past could instead live on in the now through adaptations and incorporations.

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.

There are more pages:

Riding the storm (introduction 1)