by Peter Löcke //
What is the crux of the matter? What is it "actually" about? I often ask myself this question in life. Sometimes in self-reflection. Why did I get so angry at an unfriendly cashier yesterday? and the bad weather? In other words, about a trivial matter and about something that I have no influence over anyway. With emotional distance, it's obvious that something else is actually bothering me. But what? What is the crux of the matter? Perhaps an argument with my wife, whom I love. Maybe the state of my mother's health. Maybe something else that I have suppressed.
There was something about Goethe. Using a search engine, I remember the literary background of the saying. A black poodle accompanies Faust on an Easter walk into his study and transforms into the devil Mephisto before his eyes. Dr. Faust then utters the famous sentence "So that was the crux of the matter." The crux of the matter is something that lay in the dark and comes to light. A terrible truth that has long been hidden and veiled, only to finally reveal itself. Unlike Goethe, the truth in reality does not reveal itself. You have to search for it, you have to ask questions. One question in particular. What is the crux of the matter?
This is what happened during the pandemic. People asked questions to get to the truth and the crux of the matter. They were questions based on the exclusion principle, on falsification. That's how science used to work. That was before THE science became religious. Is it a case of concentrated stupidity in politics and the media, a stupidity that has taken on a life of its own? That's what I thought in spring 2020, but at a certain point I ruled it out. I could see the ugly symptoms, but not the causes. What was behind it all, what was the real reason, what was the crux of the matter? Assumptions and working hypotheses followed. These legitimate hypotheses are now known by a different name. Well then. Better conspiracy theorists than practitioners of destruction.
What is the essence of fascism?
Instead of opening the can of worms about the Great Reset, transformation and co, I would like to ask the one poodle question that has occupied me all my life without having answered it conclusively. Fascism is evil, is the far right in a one-dimensional political map that I have been taught. Fascism is uniforms, arm-raising, media conformity, mass psychosis. And so on. That's how I would have defined fascism in my youth. But is that really the crux of the matter? How could fathers lovingly hug their children morning and evening and gas them in between [use fighting term here]? Why did people who are so much more intelligent than me actively and convincingly participate in this inhuman crime? I have never been able to get to the heart of the matter. In which animal is the devil fascism? Will it be another black poodle with a narrow moustache next time? Mephisto won't be that stupid.
What is the fascist core of the poodle? What are its characteristics, what is its essence? Many clever people have thought about this, such as the writer Umberto Eco in his book "Eternal Fascism".
"Fascism already knows everything and doesn't want to know anything else (...) Much more important (...) is that [fascism] rejects any objective discussion."
When the economist Heiner Flassbeck, interviewed by Markus Langemann, reminded me of Umberto Eco, it sent shivers down my spine. It's the same with an alarming number of topics. Whether it's the climate, the war in Ukraine or the corona complex. People seem to know everything. Knowing there is no alternative. Dissenters must not be given a platform. Never. What did Lothar Wieler once say? He said that measures should never be questioned. Has Christian Drosten ever had to publicly confront a critic? Never. To this day, Germany's top virologist refuses any objective discussion on the grounds that it's not worth it with these [use fighting term here]. Do you, as a reader, have the same experience as me, even in the closest family circles? Do you, like me, encounter an aggressive attitude that rejects any substantive discussion? Perhaps that is the crux of the matter. Perhaps it is the nature of every fascist to reject discussion of content. Mephisto is in the worst of all animals. Not in the poodle, but in the human being.
"It is our duty to expose it and point the finger at each of its new forms - every day, everywhere in the world."
"Don't believe rumors, only the official announcements."
Two quotes. One is from the book by Umberto Eco. The other is from a historical TV speech by a former German Chancellor. One sentence aims to expose the crux of the matter. The other sentence rejects any factual discussion and says "Please believe!"
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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17 Responses
The fascists don't come back as fascists. Old Uckermark country saying.
What is the crux of the matter?
What is the truth?
What is the meaning of life?
These are all certainly exciting questions that can be considered and discussed if there is interest and need.
There is probably (hopefully) a consensus among the absolute majority of people in terms of their desire and intended goal,
to live peacefully and friendly with his fellow human beings.
The question of how this could best be achieved,
is viewed differently and answered just as differently,
which shows one thing very clearly:
There is no definitive answer to this question.
More and more centralization, coercion and violence have proven to be useless and unworkable since time immemorial.
contrary to the original objective,
which already reveals the first necessary step,
that it would need,
people wanted to take an interest and stand up for more freedom and peace again.
Decentralization as the first step towards a more peaceful and friendly future, so to speak.
Would that be possible?
Anything is possible.
It simply depends on the people themselves.
More plurality through independent federal states, e.g. for the beginning (so as not to overtax the sensitive statists in their state of mind again),
who organize and finance their community independently
and would therefore be in free competition with all other federal states,
would be one possibility.
Different social and economic ideas could exist side by side and
try to prove themselves in functionality and lasting encouragement from voluntary community members.
Tuning with your feet in the event of dysfunction
would be easier for the people and
would encourage the small elite units to be more peaceful and mindful,
they don't want to find themselves alone one day.
A discussion about this core,
an evolution towards more peaceful and friendly coexistence,
I would be very pleased.
I have already thrown an idea for this into the discourse space:
Decentralization.
Until a few years ago, I had no idea how it could have been possible almost 90 years ago that inhuman National Socialism, with all its terrible consequences, could gain a foothold in our country and that the majority of the population either went along with it or looked the other way. Today, after Corona and the Ukraine war, I know how it worked (did work). It is an illusion to believe that something like this could not happen again.
Mr. Löcke, thank you for your challenging topic!
It is time-consuming and difficult to obtain reliable facts when questioning a statement.
In 2020, it was the hysteria that made me ask questions in the first place. But I could only come up with the "right answer" based on probability.
In another, simpler case, it was the statement about 40 severe side effects to a still new active pharmaceutical ingredient.
As I knew people who had successfully used this active ingredient, I consulted the literature and was amazed to see that only one case was described.
How was that possible? There was one case, which was then cited 39 times - from which the 40 cases were "assumed". This is how "untested" assumptions come into the world and are passed off as truth and warned against.
Who has the time, the means and the knowledge to always check everything for its truthfulness? - We simply accept some things as we hear/read them. Everyone.
Everyone is capable of misdeeds - and by that I don't mean a neighbor or someone else, but myself always included. How do you get out of this dilemma? - Is knowing about it enough?
Envy and lust for power. Envy since Cain and Abel. Greed for power, because we are all at the mercy of others and must die. The moment I have power over others, can torture or kill them, I forget that I am at their mercy. Kierkegaard, who speaks of man's being at the mercy of others, has good thoughts on this.
During my years at a left-wing comprehensive school, I experienced left-wing fascism at its finest on the part of my colleagues. That was the first time I really understood how fascism worked back then.
They say the devil is in the detail. Fortunately, the devil or Mephistopheles, as Goethe calls him in Faust, doesn't go to too much trouble to conceal these mistakes. This distinguishes these mistakes and small lies from the mega lies that are deliberately spread by Mephistopheles or merely misguided people (?) in order to advance their interests.
While the claim of an alleged "Jewish world conspiracy" was such a mega-lie that led humanity in general and our people in particular astray and brought the world close to the abyss in the 20th century, the mega-lie of the 21st century is the claim that nature would be CO2-neutral and therefore climate-neutral without humans. It is definitely not. Over the millennia, nature has consumed dramatic amounts of CO2. For millions of years, only the CO2 emissions from volcanoes kept life on earth going. In addition, the volcanoes have emitted an infinite amount of CO2 over the course of millions of years. Nevertheless, the CO2 concentration of the trace gas CO2, which is essential for life on Earth, has fallen from around 1500 ppm to a pre-industrial 280 ppm over the last 50 million years (see https://bildungsserver.hamburg.de/treibhausgase/6088114/kohlendioxid-erdgeschichte/; 1st diagram). During the last ice age around 20,000 years ago, the CO2 concentration was even lower due to the binding capacity of the oceans at lower temperatures. This is important to know because plant growth, i.e. photosynthesis, is directly dependent on the CO2 concentration. At 120 ppm (=0.012%), the so-called C3 plants, which comprise around 90% of all plants, stop growing completely (see https://bildungsserver.hamburg.de/klimawandel-und-landwirtschaft-nav/2203496/kohlendioxid/; Fig. 1).
It does not exactly speak for the success of our education system, but all the more for Mephisto that despite the obviousness of the lie, which can already be exposed by simple mathematics based on official figures, this mega-lie of the 21st century persists so stubbornly.
RECALCULATION:
The Federal Environment Agency describes on its homepage why so-called "climate deniers" are wrong and why volcanism plays only a minor role in the CO2 balance (see https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/service/uba-fragen/uebersehen-die-klimatologen-die-vulkanischen):
Excerpt from the line of argument published by the Federal Environment Agency: "From the fact that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has remained roughly constant over the last 10,000 years or so (approx. 280 +/- 10 ppm), it follows that volcanic CO2 emissions must be insignificant compared to human emissions. In fact, human CO2 emissions (in particular through the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, firewood use, cement production, etc.) have risen to more than 41 billion tons of CO2 per year during the industrial age (as of 2018). Volcanic CO2 emissions, on the other hand, are much lower. They amount to around 0.3 to 0.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, which corresponds to 0.7 to 1.5 percent compared to human emissions."
That sounds plausible at first. However, if you do the math, even without knowledge of higher mathematics, you will find that volcanoes have emitted 3000 to 6000 billion tons of CO2 in the last 10,000 years (= 10,000 years x 0.3 ..... 0.6 billion tons of CO2/year), which is about 1.3 to 2.6 times as much CO2 as humans have emitted by burning fossil fuels or slash-and-burn since the beginning of the industrial revolution until 2019: about 2340 billion tons of CO2 (see https://wiki.bildungsserver.de/klimawandel/index.php/Kohlendioxid-Konzentration). Although volcanoes have been emitting huge amounts of CO2 for millions of years, the CO2 concentration has been falling continuously for around 50 million years (see link from the Hamburg Education Server on the CO2 history of the Earth above). From around 1500 ppm to 280 ppm in the pre-industrial world.
How is that possible?
The CO2 discussion tends to conceal the fact that the formation of calcareous layers in particular, but also fossil deposits, binds vast amounts of CO2. If volcanoes did not emit as much CO2 as is currently in the Earth's atmosphere over a period of just 5,000 to 10,000 years, life on Earth would not be possible. As volcanic activity is far less intense today than it was in the days of the dinosaurs, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has steadily decreased. This only changed with modern man and his technology. So far, our emissions have postponed this process of CO2 degradation in the Earth's atmosphere by around 10 million years into the future.
If the earth has no gully for CO2, these indisputable facts allow only the following conclusions:
Decreasing volcanic activity poses the greatest threat to life on earth due to decreasing CO2 emissions. In the last 6 million years, the CO2 content has continuously decreased from 385 ppm to 280 ppm (see link from the Hamburg Education Server on plant growth and CO2 above). Extrapolated linearly, it would therefore only have taken another 10 million years or so for life on Earth to go into a dangerous permanent hibernation.
No matter how you calculate, you always come to the same result - the following applies to the CO2 contained exclusively in the Earth's atmosphere: "If volcanoes did not emit about as much CO2 every 5,000 to 10,000 years as is currently in the Earth's atmosphere, about a third of which is due to human activity, life on Earth would not be possible."
TO FIGURE: The earth's surface area is 5100 million km². The weight of the column of air above one square kilometer is just under 10 million tons, as can easily be calculated from the air pressure of 1 bar = 1kp/cm². In total, the earth's atmosphere weighs about 5 x 10 to the power of 15 tons. 100 ppm therefore corresponds to one ten-thousandth of this weight or 5 x 10 to the power of 11 tons equals 500 billion tons. Since the molecular weight of CO2 at 44 g/mol is about 1.4 times as high as the molecular weight of air (approx. 31 g/mol), 100 ppm CO2 therefore weighs about 700 billion tons. All CO2 molecules in the earth's atmosphere (about 420 ppm) therefore currently weigh about 3000 billion tons (= 420 ppm/100 ppm x 700 tons), i.e. exactly the same amount that volcanism emits at the current level of CO2 every 5,000 to 10,000 years according to the Federal Environment Agency: 10,000 years x 0.3 billion/year tons (see above - data from the Federal Environment Agency) = 5,000 years x 0.6 billion tons/year = 3000 billion tons!
As you can see, the manipulations of the Federal Environment Agency & Co only have to be big enough and the stigmatization deterrent enough for no one to actually think about the true situation. The so-called fact-checkers then refer to the statements of the Federal Environment Agency. This cements the lie and produces so-called "climate deniers" in the ÖRR.
SUMMARIZED:
Life on earth is undoubtedly dependent on the CO2 drip of volcanoes, whether the ideologies of the Federal Environment Agency, the Greens, various NGOs, including Greenpeace, FfF and the ÖRR want to admit this idea or not. The fact that humans are more than compensating for the dangerous trend of decreasing volcanism is more of an opportunity than a risk for life on earth in the long term. CO2, which currently makes up around 0.042% of the Earth's atmosphere, is still a rare building block of all life on Earth and not a pollutant, as many protagonists of the green transformation of our society would like to persuade us. This is particularly true against the backdrop of the decline in volcanism in the history of the earth. Many countries no longer even have a single life-giving volcano. Against this backdrop, it is downright ludicrous to consider filtering CO2 out of the air. (see 19:00 today's news from 22.04.2021).
Now to the RELIGIOUS DIMENSION and thus to what is probably the MOST POWERFUL COUNTERPLAYER OF THE DEVIL: GOD
There is no doubt that CO2 levels decreased continuously over the past 50 million years until the so-called industrial revolution. Before that, there was a massive increase to around 1500 ppm due to increased volcanism. Now it is rising steeply again due to human activity. There is no way around the realization that without the two special effects - first increased volcanic activity 60 - 50 million years ago and now human technology - an ever further reduction in the CO2 content of the atmosphere would probably have ended life on Earth sooner or later.
The fact that the CO2 level has now been given a massive boost for the second time in the history of the Earth, thus delaying the end of life on Earth for many millions of years due to a lack of CO2, is either due to two great lucky coincidences or to God. In any case, it makes no sense whatsoever to demonize human intervention in the CO2 balance in view of these correlations.
In the end, the only question that remains is: who is behind this mega lie of the 21st century?
The great Mephisto or just little misguided left-green cosmopolitans who want nothing more than the great transformation of our society that our ex-chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 22.04.2021 in the 7 p.m. today program (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocHHQ6YUH8k?, from min 3:05), or the end of capitalism?
Dear Dr. Aßmann,
Thank you for providing the summary 😉
A quote from Bela Bartok's one-act opera "Bluebeard's Castle" always comes to mind in these contexts: "The truth is smoke and is an echo only of a sigh's breath".
Yes, uncertainty is the only certainty. I also find the following sentence helpful for classifying many things: "Reality is what affects us and truth is what is".
Let's stay awake and in search of the truth.
Best regards.
Dear Mr. Linsner,
The search for the truth continues (see below) and not just on the topics of climate change and climate protection.
It is astonishing to follow the press and media coverage of China's zero Covid strategy and compare it with the situation in Germany a year ago. One gets the feeling that the press and media want to reinterpret the success of the people who were prepared to take to the streets for freedom and truthfulness as their success. Anyone who reads the reader comments on the following WELT report will understand that the usual two to three-day period for largely forgetting in our fast-moving times does not seem to apply to the corona measures: see https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article242365915/China-Lambsdorff-sieht-Null-Covid-Strategie-zum-Scheitern-verurteilt.html
The experiences with the often pointless and haphazard coronavirus measures were probably too drastic for people to simply forget. Politicians, but also the press and media, as well as the judiciary and academia, still have to learn that there are also issues where the popular politician's saying "What do I care about my gossip from yesterday" is not applicable. The transformation of our entire way of living and working (quote from Angela Merkel on 22.04.2021), orchestrated by WWF leader Klaus Schwab and his disciples organized in various groups, including Young Global Leaders, is certainly another topic with enormous scope in addition to the corona measures, the consequences of which for all of us cannot yet be fully grasped at the moment. We can only hope together that the awakening in this regard will not come too late and turn seamlessly into a rude awakening.
Best regards
Roland Aßmann
Anyone who is prepared to deny the obvious, i.e. the significance of volcanic CO2 emissions on the Earth's CO2 balance, in order to help their own ideology gain acceptance, is also prepared to deny other obvious facts if these manipulations serve the truth of the "good cause".
Another lie in this context, since 2019 at the latest, is that there is no other explanation for the now undeniable climate change than the increase in the concentration of so-called greenhouse gases. As early as 1930, the German researcher Heinrich von dem Borne pointed out the importance of evaporation for the climate in his publication "Evaporation Studies": "Introduction - With the help of apparatus, it will probably never be possible to determine the actual evaporation of certain land areas, as important as such a determination may be with regard to climate research, the earth's water balance and the like." He goes on to experimentally prove the dependence between evaporation and wind speed and describes the findings in the form of mathematical equations.
We now know from the Trenberth diagram, which is widely used and recognized in climate research, that evaporation contributes about half of the cooling of the earth's surface. In contrast, infrared heat radiation only dissipates around a third of the solar energy reaching the earth's surface. The remaining sixth results from the second material heat flow, the thermal updrafts.
Anyone who is aware of these connections should actually become aware when the terrestrial winds, i.e. the winds over land, decrease globally. This is well documented, even if there is still disagreement about the causes. The most likely cause is probably an increase in the roughness of the earth's surface. A corresponding report can even be found on the EU website: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/stilling-global-wind-speeds-slowing-1960. It is interesting to note that the year indicated, i.e. the 1960s, since which this trend has been observed, coincides with the beginning of the current climate change spurt.
In addition to the qualitative correlations described above, which are likely to be reinforced by other effects such as the large-scale drainage of wetlands, the clearing of primeval forests and, of course, the sealing of soils for settlement areas, the facts described also allow a quantitative estimate to be made. All basic data such as the average cooling capacity of evaporation (about 80 W/m² of the earth's surface - see Trenberth diagram), the proportion of land areas, the decrease in wind speeds, the dependence between wind speed and evaporation and the global water cycle are finally known. As a result, the effect described is likely to be of the same order of magnitude as the so-called CO2 radiative forcing attributed to the increase in CO2 concentration.
The fact that since the introduction of wind energy in Germany not only a particularly pronounced Stilling, but also, as WELT puts it, "blatant climate change" has set in, which in contrast to the time before that differs from the global course upwards, further confirms the Stilling thesis (see 1st diagram of the DWD: https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article158110222/Wetter-aendert-sich-in-Deutschland-besonders-krass.html).
The connections described are obvious. What is missing is the willingness of the press and media to report on it. There seems to be a clear agreement among so-called "thoroughbred" editorial networks not to report on anything that could fundamentally shake the belief in the CO2 thesis. This series of letters to the editor documents the resulting struggle between the press and media: https://www.welt.de/242114461#/comment/245962410
The few independent journalists who nevertheless dare to report on this can easily be relegated to the right-wing corner and thus effectively deprived of their freedom of opinion, which is necessary in a genuine democracy: https://www.tichyseinblick.de/kolumnen/lichtblicke-kolumnen/das-abc-von-energiewende-und-gruensprech-105-terrestrial-stilling-windkraft/
When Umberto Eco names the characteristics of fascism (see https://www.pressenza.com/de/2017/10/14-merkmale-des-ur-faschismus-nach-umberto-eco/), these include the following three points:
"3 Irrationalism: "Thinking as a form of castration". Culture is suspected as soon as it becomes critical. Distrust of the intellect.
4. rejection of analytical criticism: if science sees lack of agreement as useful, it is treason for primal fascism.
5. rejection of diversity of opinion and pluralism: the natural fear of difference is exploited and exacerbated. The first appeal of fascism or pre-fascism is against intruders."
This should give us all food for thought, especially as other items on his list are also currently on the rise, e.g. nationalism, militarism and criticism of pacifism.
I recently formulated the question of "the crux of the matter" differently here, I asked myself who benefits from our politicians doing things the way they are being done at the moment. The citizens see every wrong decision, it's amazing that it's still so quiet.
The question must be who benefits if Germany is deindustrialized, immigration gets out of hand and Europe is plunged into chaos. That brings us closer to the point.
And as far as getting annoyed about trivial things Mr. Löcke, I recommend Vera Birkenbihl, it would be interesting what she would have to say about it today, after all she was way ahead of her time. She foresaw the Internet even though it didn't exist back then. A clever woman, unfortunately no longer with us.
Well to the point. The masses are an amorphous number of followers. This has been drastically demonstrated to me in recent years by COVID-19, climate hysteria and the proxy war over Ukraine. And every system, even so-called Western-style democracies, first become authoritarian and then fascistoid when those in power defend their sinecures. Of course, only for the good of all fellow human beings. Fascism is not a matter of left or right. The common citizen immunizes himself by looking and listening away and refuses to engage in debate. Hannah Ahrendt's wonderful saying applies: It is not dictators who make dictatorships, but followers who make dictators. Quoted from memory. What I wouldn't have thought as a post-war child is that it would all happen again, even if it looks different. After all the lectures in class, from Borchert to Eich to Brecht. Understood nothing, learned nothing, retained nothing? Madness! Instead of, "Don't be sand in the gears of the world", naked conformism.
Such an important question - what is the crux of the matter? Thank you for that! After almost three years in this madness, I would answer it like this: it's the inability of most people to listen carefully and question words without judgment. A current example from this week: an attempted dialog with a former colleague about this and that in the world. I would like to point out something that I personally benefited from in an interview with Hans-Georg Massen. It was a bit of an eye-opener. My counterpart's response: "But he's on the right." I don't want to stop discussing at this point. "What is right-wing in your eyes?" And then there's a long silence. We have forgotten - and perhaps I have to include myself in this - to question not only ourselves, our counterparts, but above all individual words that have such great social explosive power. What would have happened if the term "conspiracy theorist" had had a positive connotation from the outset? In my imagination, someone is standing at the bakery counter and chatting to a neighbor. And he says: "Have you ever read up on the VT theorists? They seem like cool people, I've learned a lot there." I'm just going to say that the damage to our society would have been less if certain terms had been used in a VALUE-FREE way. "It always starts with language"....
I've learned a lot in the last two years. What makes people tick? Fear eats the soul. Deep-seated traumas are triggered by fear-inducing messages. Some people follow instructions because they are afraid of death, others because they are afraid of poverty and others because they are afraid of exclusion. And then there are people who follow the herd, because the leader will already know, or so many can't be wrong, can they?
"I think, therefore I am" is therefore not true. Rather, "I feel, therefore discussion is pointless."
I feel the same way and I sympathize with the "tortured creature". If you know how the game works, you can have fun like Mephisto on this earth.
I can only think of G. Michael Hopf: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times." It's not about poodle cores, it's simply time for "hard times" again. The neglect of prosperity has reached an unprecedented dimension and has passed its zenith. Cultivating ideologies is more important than anything else - prosperity, decency and basic democratic values are relics from bygone and long outdated times. Opposition at any price and as an end in itself, social media likes as the elixir of life - I no longer engage in substantive discussions, it's pointless.
Thank you! Is this perhaps the reason why Goethe's "Faust" is no longer recommended as literature for upper secondary schools? Should young people in this land of poets and thinkers be taught not to ask questions? Should they no longer learn to think at all? Believe what the authorities say?
What is the crux of the matter? Certainly not the development of a self-determined person who can use his independent thinking against manipulation!
What a contribution, it sends shivers down your spine. The poodle's ugly face hits the nail on the head. Only together can we defeat the poodle
Very well asked! At least from my point of view, because I've been asking myself the same thing since I was deeply shocked by the vast majority of my fellow human beings in 2020, including at the supermarket checkout or at the doctor. What came out of the dark and into the light of day in my country? What is the core of the fascist poodle? - I once stood at the fence in Buchenwald and could find no explanation, no idea how the families of the senior officers could stand it, right next to the fence next to the main gate? How they could live their daily lives in their houses right next to the horror? There was even a children's playground there! How does that work? Does it require insensitivity? - In the here and now, I often have to think about the fact that I see structural similarities to the past, even though the surface looks completely different. You are a uniform. And instead of wearing one completely, you 'only' wear a mask. You don't raise your arm expansively either, but you raise your lips all the more easily to say "stay healthy!" That sounds just as silly as it looked back then. I think so; and that's another structural similarity. Or is it a mental one? What is the crux of the matter?