Everything starts once; This blog and with a first entry also come up with thoughts of what you want to confront your potential readers with and, above all, in what way.
Why not just with a few basic thoughts on society? That is, it may be assumed, a little bit polarizing, but it is also something I like to deal with. Why not just discard a few common explanatory models and present new ones?
What can be said about this society? Well, it breaks down and by that I mean into many small parts and not into two camps, as in my opinion, is claimed far too often.
Middle erosion
Society crumbles into ever smaller realities of life, which are also known as social milieus. Each of them is defined by the fact that those who belong to them share specific world views, behavior patterns, norms, values or ideas of a good life. Depending on which studies and surveys one can trust, there are up to 19 of them in Germany, whereby the sub-milieus are also cumulated here. And the erosion does not end, but continues at a breakneck pace.
Milieu conflicts and struggles
With so many clashing interests, the assumption that there is an increased potential for conflict between different milieus appears to be a legitimate one, because today more different world views collide than ever before. The resulting disputes can be summarized under the term milieu struggle. This means that conflicts arise between the realities of life (milieus) of a society (or several societies), which are actively or passively carried out. The milieu conflict always precedes milieu conflicts. These are conflicts that are justified when the needs of the milieu-building are partially or completely unfulfilled or the self-image of the reality of life is attacked.
Now these can appear openly, for example when conservative positions meet socio-ecological positions, but the more dangerous are those in which the members of a reality of life do not have the opportunity to make themselves heard and recognized. Take, for example, less well-off traditionalists or hedonists. Then the conflicts ferment, sometimes happier, sometimes less edifying, until they finally – apparently irrational – can discharge. Anyone who has always wanted to know how Donald Trump made it to the presidency is just as correct here as anyone who ponders the causes of the rioting party society in Stuttgart in disbelief.
Yes, different realities of life can pull together for a short time or make it appear that way. However, they always only pursue their own interests. To try to turn temporary or apparent milieu coalitions into two rigid blocks would be foolish, because these do not exist. On the contrary, it only creates new conflicts that were on the discharge – a veritable vicious circle. If you want to reach the individual realities of life, it is necessary to recognize and satisfy individual needs and not to open the drawers and to place as many milieus as possible in a few of them. This is undoubtedly more time-consuming than traditional camp formation and the popular “we” versus “them”, but it is the only way to lasting social peace. Perhaps it is also less useful in the short term, but a long-term guarantee of stability and at least a ceasefire.
Customization
But what am I writing there. Of course, the phenomenon of milieu struggle is only one of many that characterize modern times. It would be nice if it was that easy. But is that it? No, it is not, because crumbling societies as well as milieu conflicts and struggles are only one pillar of a new age. Another would be the rapid development of the individual, supported by behavioral capitalism, a force that is just as underestimated as finance capitalism was once, and modern stimulus society, which shape people into homo stimulus.
Collective individualism
Yes, a new era has begun, but, as is customary with a change of epoch, such conversions happen unnoticed and only appear logical, inevitable and self-evident when viewed afterwards. So it will be with the dynamic era of collective individualism.
In retrospect you always knew it and of course. But, to begin the counter-speech itself, does it still fit in with Goethe that there is no point of view within an epoch to consider an epoch? But does that also apply to a period when information is more easily accessible than ever before? Can you make it that easy for yourself?
- Influences on the individual in the 21st century
Leaving old ways and taking new ones
We can of course wait for the retrospective and continue to transfer obsolete constructs from days long past to social phenomena of the 21st century. Yes, it may also be strategically useful at times; that has already been mentioned. And of course; if the whole thing doesn’t fit, it will just be made to fit. But what does it achieve? The change of times cannot be stopped in this way and in the long run all that remains is to withdraw into one’s own reality. And who really believes that such changes stop at the small, individual reality into which one likes to withdraw in such cases? Sometimes one can avoid a new age, one cannot escape it.
Everything can be discussed
Then why not see the world as it is, because you don’t have to understand it before you can change it? Somehow shake up and explain. Did you succeed in doing this with these words? This critical question has to be asked and I will just as quickly elude it by referring to the name of this blog: It is an opinion of objective subjectivity. Everything can therefore be discussed at this point and I think that there was enough gossip for the first entry. The reader decides whether it has succeeded.
Andreas Herteux is a publicist, philosopher and the head of the Erich von Werner Society, an independent institution for contemporary issues. His books have been translated into several languages. He has summarized his ideas for society in the 21st century in the book “Basics of Social Developments in the 21st Century – New Explanatory Approaches to Understanding a Complex Age”.