by Peter Löcke //
Always remain friendly.
Why are so many people so quick to lose their temper?
As is so often the case, I find an initial answer in a personal experience. It is the experiences I have had myself that also make me realize that there is often a bigger issue behind my own experience. This also applies to the topic of error culture & error-friendliness. How do I, how do other people, politicians and political parties deal with their mistakes? I'll give you the answer in advance. Uncultivated and unfriendly. My personal experience was, you guessed it, unflattering for me.
Crap! How could this have happened to me? In a recent column, I made a blunder, a mistake. The mistake was the wrong date for German Unity Day, was corrected, a transparent note attached to the column. I could forgive myself for my intellectual failure, even smile about it. What I could not forgive myself for was that my mishap hurt people who suffered first-hand under the GDR regime. Here I can only sincerely apologize in the hope that my apology will be accepted by those affected. But let's move away from self-observation and towards external observation. I am entering the SM area of life. As you know, SM is an abbreviation for social media. What does the error culture look like there?
There is always a transmitter in the SM sector. This can be an anonymous ordinary consumer or a political celebrity. In an emotional state of emergency, this sender sends out a tweet that clearly exceeds the emotional threshold. Or they post something that turns out to be sheer nonsense in retrospect. This in turn is read by the recipients, which in extreme cases can be millions of followers. What happens next? The reception committee reacts to the scandalous error tweet with amusement, malice, indignation, anger and, above all, an ultimate demand.
Delete that, please!
Back on a human factory setting, the broadcaster, bowed in grief, complies with the request and deletes the tweet that it would have preferred never to have published. Excuse me. There is something deeply childish about this deletion culture. It is unkind to mistakes. The mistake was made, the thought was thought, the feeling was felt and everyone knows about it. What has happened cannot be undone by deletion. People who are not well-disposed towards the sender and political enemies have archived the tweet by screenshot anyway, to remind the offender of it for the rest of their lives. Only one thing can help here. You explain yourself. You explain how the mistake could have happened, apologize if necessary or explain objectively why you continue to insist on your point of view. That would be error-friendly. That would be an adult error culture.
What people try to do digitally doesn't work in real life either. The following has probably happened to all of us. At lunchtime, you slip out horrible sentences that you slam at your partner or work colleague. In the evening, it dawns on you that it was a mistake. And then? No matter how you deal with your mistake, no matter what you do or don't do - there's one thing you can't do. You can't turn the clock back to breakfast time. You can't erase your own words. That's exactly what people are trying to do in the digital space. How childish!
The way all parties deal with their historical mistakes is also childish, uncultivated and unfriendly. This applies to the single party "We DemocratsTM" with regard to mistakes made and the failure to come to terms with the coronavirus measures. This applies to the "SMU", the Socialist Merkel Union, which persistently conceals its mistake that the motto "We can do it" has driven Germany's car into a dead end. This currently applies to the FDP in the election campaign. The Liberals' posters feature slogans that actually speak to me from my freedom-loving heart.
The state is not your legal guardian!
I would like to spontaneously sign this and other beliefs with a cross at the ballot box. Unfortunately, it occurs to me that in recent years the Liberals have done the complete opposite of what they are currently boldly calling for. The first letter of the FDP was sold off completely, the second letter in parts. As long as the FDP does not admit this mistake, as long as this culture of error prevails, such election campaign slogans seem implausible to ridiculous.
Why this unfriendly political treatment of our own mistakes? All these elephant mistakes are visible to everyone in the political arena. They are obvious in the truest sense of the word. Nevertheless, the blame is hushed up, denied or deflected onto other actors.
Fear of losing face!
The answer is always the same. It is the fear of losing face. There is a panicked political fear of naming one's own mistakes and taking responsibility for them. After all, this could cause several prongs to break from the crown that they have made for themselves and thus lose votes. The irony of this phenomenon? It is precisely this childish behavior, precisely this lack of political error culture, that leads to a far greater loss of face in reality than the one feared in the mind.
Let he who is without sin and fault cast the first stone! So I'll confess something to you. When something embarrassing happened to me in the past, I used to break a prong out of my crown. For a long time, I took the approach of sticking this prong back on. As unnoticed as possible. I didn't want anyone to find out about my mistake. It was the wrong approach on my part, a mistake.
It is healthier to change your headgear. A jester's cap will do instead of a crown. It doesn't have any golden spikes. One of my many foolish quirks, not to say mistakes, is to collect mugs with sayings printed on them. This (hopefully error-free) column will end with two of these mug sayings.
People without a quirk are crap! Always stay friendly!
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
English 
German 
Spanish
5 Responses
In this context, it is worth recalling Pierre du Pont's bon mot, which he uttered before the French National Assembly in 1790: "Bad logicians have involuntarily committed more crimes than bad people have intentionally.
And we also know that the well-intentioned is not always the good.
From this we can conclude that the well-intentioned can also be a crime. You can apologize for a mistake made at the expense of another person or at the expense of a third person, and if the mistake is not a crime, you can also forgive it. However, if it is an actual crime, it can also be forgiven, but now it becomes much more difficult. Now the question of reparation comes into play. Now it becomes clear who is responsible and who takes responsibility. Now it becomes clear whether we are in kindergarten or whether we are actually adults.
It's like playing soccer as a kid in the backyard. A disk breaks. All children instinctively know, oops... that wasn't good. Now comes the question of who is to blame! Who is to blame? Little Willi who shot? Little Heinrich who said: let's play soccer in the backyard! Or Little Erna who said: The windows are all made of bulletproof glass. Or is it the community of residents who perhaps allowed the soccer game in the backyard? Who pays for the glass? Who will make good the damage?
This is just one small example that we can observe today. You can apologize, but who will make up for the damage?
And this is where it gets interesting . It starts with apportioning blame, he is to blame, he is to blame ..., he said ... she decided so and so.... . When it comes to actual responsibility with reparation for guilt or an actual crime, everyone turns into little children.
You could also remember Konrad Adenauer. He once said - in essence:
"The opposition said that the other day I said the opposite of what I said today. I did that too. But what do I care today about my stupid gossip from the other day."
Somehow he had style, regardless of whether you liked him or not. In contrast to (offended) politicians today.
But it can also be ignorance, arrogance, ..... It is also a kind of style, if this statement is examined closely and you know the entire text on which this statement is based, the style becomes quite comical. Because this statement resulted in a breach of the Basic Law. Which, by the way, is still causing damage today.
Your Freudian slip with the wrong date is not a bad thing. It's even human.
I, who grew up in Leipzig, am not offended by this or anything else.
In contrast, the behavior of people like Mr. Spahn and Mr. Lauterbach with regard to their corona policy is terrible and mocking: no apology, nothing.
On the contrary: they behave like the nation's teachers despite all justified criticism.
People like that don't belong in politics. They should bake very small rolls in humility.
Why only the FDP? You could go on to ask: Why only in politics? Not even in society in general? - And doesn't it start at school, since we know what sticks in our heads and why? Now that we know the power of words and emotions (scientifically proven), wouldn't it be better to direct thoughts, words and emotions towards the good, as is already partly done in this column? One thing is crystal clear: feelings of guilt and fear (again, when it comes to our own mistakes) are the gateways to manipulation. Let's take a look at where and by whom this is spread! The result should be enlightening.