One expression that gets used to death in German is “was mich umtreibt”—roughly, what keeps me restless, what won’t let me go. The verb umtreiben has no direct equivalent in Russian or English. Even so, or maybe precisely because of that, I’m going to use it today:
What still won’t let me go is the situation with the education provider I described a few days ago. When I look into it, abysses open up. Something has been torn apart structurally here, and it is eroding our democracy and the way we live together—simply because nobody gives a damn. The power imbalance is ruthlessly exploited to break the rules. I am now being unlawfully threatened with having my fee withheld for work I have delivered 100 percent—if I keep refusing to bow to their arbitrariness.
I ask myself:
Where does this fear of communicating freely actually come from? What happened to our supposedly “free democratic basic order”? Did it ever really exist—or is it just a narrative to sell us capitalism more smoothly and make us compliant for bullshit jobs?
In the GDR, as a member of the border troops, I once stood with one foot in the military prison in Schwedt. Back then, what saved me was my contact with Soviet military personnel, who in the end had more power than the Stasi. Today, no prison is threatening me, but the final consequence could be financial exclusion and social stigma. It is humanity’s ancient, evolutionary fear of being cast out of the community—the sociometer, Dunbar’s number.
Still, I will do justice to my sense of what’s right. I can’t let this stand, because as a human being I have a different mission. I’m with Goethe: “Noble be man, helpful and good.” For me, in this case, noble means “sounding the alarm” (to borrow another overused expression) when I see clearly that something is going wrong. https://lnkd.in/din8YACj
What do you take away from this thought?
Thank you. Every answer fits – take it with you into your day. Would you like to share something yourself?
