top of page

Depression or anger?

for German click here

Three years after the return from exotic Thailand, I feel more and more here not only missing the warm sea, but above all the warmth of the people. As soon as they are over forty, they rarely come out of their dwellings, avoid any kind of risk, especially not to get close to each other at first hand, and do not seem to like pleasure in their lives.    

On the road and in transport they avoid eye contact and often talk more with dogs than with children. Of course the TV is preferred to a cinema.

How different could the relationship between younger and older people be! Here the young people work and consume, and they are already told in the cradle, so that it is already unconscious and internalized as young adults, that they should not get involved with a dirty old man. Elderly men, who often are only seen as annoying, are tending to weaken, to avoid critizing, and are still told at the doorstep for a coffin, where they scarcely have an opportunity to make contact with the youth, that they should not get too close to a young woman.

Do not tell me that I am a bad sexist! With this theme, I have been concerned more than most of the compatriots, and have for sure learned that men and women are not alike, but that they both should have access to the trigger. But they seem to have forgotten where the trigger is. However, however! I never said other people should do this or that. No no no! On the other hand, I said all the more openly and should shout out with loud voice, that they could do many, many things they are not doing now, and which would hardly hurt them, but perhaps do quite well.

Of course, I have often insistingly been told that "finally" every human being has to decide independently what is right to do, and I have also seen the evil things that missionaries have committed throughout the world, so that no other choice seems to remain for me but sticking a thick patch on my own mouth.

But before doing it I shall scream again, that I do NOT just want more sex, but that the matter is about MUCH more. I would also like to have together more watching and thinking, more feeling and joy, more awareness of the relationship between sex and power, and more movement and activities. Yes, this means transport and professional activities, which however should respect our beautiful earth and all life on it.

On which basis I would like to put the whole thing, is also still hardly recognized after three years. Instead there are mainly three allegations. I have already replied on showing not enough attention and being hyperactive, furthermore, on being too authoritarian and in some cases simply wrong. It may be partly true, because I am certainly not a perfectionist, but this is for sure not a crime. However I am mainly concerned about three very different things, namely, in first place about adventures, then about joyful life, and, finally, about achievable insights. This includes fitness, freedom and a well-washed brain. But for me it also means to turn vehemently against the dictatorship, which has unfortunately returned to Thailand, which does not seem to deter most pooh citizens in the least from fattening the actual dictatorship by drinking beer on Thai beaches. In the same way, it means for me not to forget the terrible war experienced in my own youth, but to show the horror, especially the now again threatening atom bombs, at least on a TV screen not causing much pain, let alone in a modern cinema with its powerful sound but which is only used for arty or even silly American films at the most primitive level. In such a cinema, no older person will go anyway, because the big screen will make forget the own living room.

I am very depressed, and incredibly angry, as those really most amazing experiences of the years in Thailand are ignored, neither read nor listened to, or shown on the damn television. It is downplayed, criticized, I myself am considered for a sick, absurd, failed fool. Am I really? Is self-criticism missing? Oooor?

I know or am at least well aware how the citizens feel themselves insecure, or at least could feel, because they do not even allow themselves to be approached at a critical distance. But it can not be said clearer: it is not enough to just listen to the filtered squelch in our much too expensively charged public television, it is not enough to see the strangers only from afar. It is a medieval idea that free sex is still dangerous today and has nothing to do with power, and the same way all the natural resources that are also important to our descendants do not have to be consumed in an idiotic race for more and more economic growth during their working hours which are of limited value for themselves. So what? At the very least, a raven bursts from the roof his ideas of a modern Middle Way, despite nuclear trials, hurricanes and a devastated Orient, so that men and women, and even youth, can hear it on the other side of thick walls. But hardly anyone likes that. Does it sound too depressed or too angry? Oh, it's just a raven!

Be careful! According to new investigations, the smaller brain of this bird has a higher density of nerve cells than the human one, and even in its reaction and decision-making capacity, he does not need to shy away from comparisons. Are those modern people, who now believe in rationality instead of prescribed faith, really so far above all doubt? Rationally, of course, everything that does not necessarily have the stamp "correct" can be questioned according to the rules of such a world of thought, which however is not to be equated with human nature. But what cannot be rationalized must not necessarily lack reason. The really bad thing is one-sidedness, regardless of whether it is about media or universities, spirituality or sport, sex or power, ecology or economy. But if it is balanced, all of a sudden this can be very humane and help avoid many conflicts. Undeniably ravens are sometimes quarreling, but they do not wage war, are great survival experts, and obviously not stupid. They could be called lovebirds, because they like to make love.  

© Copyright (all rights reserved) Hans J. Unsoeld, Berlin 2017

Updated September 13, 2017  

bottom of page