CHOICE (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100 cm)
WHO WOULD THEY CHOOSE
If aliens chose to whom to talk No necessity for intelligence nor resources Governmental approval not required Their superior awareness, interested in The poetic and artistic capacity of humans
If animals chose with whom to live No need for domestication nor exploitation Business profit not required Their unconditional love thankful for The compassionate and caring capacity of humans
If plants chose by whom to grow No requisite for pesticides nor fertilizing Industrial control not required Their exceptional frugality appreciating of The responsible and modest capacity of humans
If gods chose for whom to care No demand for confessions nor fees Religious punishment not required Their divine grace, inclusive of The spiritual and free capacity of humans
THE RIGHT WAY (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 120 cm)
CAPITALISM IS GREAT
Shit, how can I pay? Follow economy! Inherited through money, approved by aristocracy, capitalism is right. The shitty artists into ruin; they are not realistic about the right way. Serving beauty doesn’t pay!
Hell, how can I say? Follow politics! Merited through rights, approved by meritocracy, capitalism is great. The hellish comedians into shame; they are not serious about the great way. Serving humor doesn’t pay!
Fuck, how can I convey? Follow media! Gained through voices, approved by mobocracy, capitalism is good. The fucking musicians into oblivion; they are not important for the good way. Serving inspiration doesn’t pay!
God, how can I thrive? Follow science! Achieved through tools, approved by technocracy, capitalism is correct. The godly naturalists into sickness; they are not advanced about the correct way. Serving nature doesn’t pay!
Damn, how can I realize? Follow religion! Granted through membership, approved by theocracy, capitalism is fine. The damn spirituals into condemnation; they are not chosen for the fine way. Serving the soul doesn’t pay!
Man, how can I help? Follow the state! Legit through power, approved by bureaucracy, capitalism is fair. The manly selves into oppression; they are not conform with the fair way. Serving freedom doesn’t pay!
TORN OUT BY WAR (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 100 cm)
TORN OUT BY WAR
I walk in an unknown, dust burnt by the sun, street, a busy one, and blocks in a line. Traces of war on walls, the street’s potholes, slow the convoys, and directed arms. Keeping the steady pace, to meet at my place, aimed to displace and cover my face. Shooting and hellfire, despite the scene so dire, I’m back to inquire, and I do see her. I could shoot as well, an angel from hell; they don’t yell and then repel. Torn out of this dream, no way to remain; I hope you’re fine, and we’ll return. A better time, peace, less shooting at least, conquered the beasts and where love wins. Strong to not lose faith, don’t give in to fight, a temporary night, and we’re alright.
CYBORG / SPIRORG (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm)
The glorified vision of cybernetic organisms aimed at “improving” humans through electromechanical devices and software algorithms is a mechanistic approach that reduces humans to machines. Instead of a cyborg-like facade and mind, developments would be desirable, through which the human beings learns again to express their inner authentic, unique, creative and colorful true self with courage as an expression of their liberated souls. Back to nature, art, and love. Let us be spiritual organisms; It would be for the good of each and all.
LIFESPAN I & II (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm)
LIFESPAN I & II (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm)
Lifespan Development: Cultural norms or personal needs?
Which one would you choose to visualize your life? They may seem quite similar and yet be very different. Both go along nine stages of a lifespan but in different directions and different coloring.
Birth
Kindergarten, school
Work-life
Marriage
Having children
Building/buying a house
Career/Personal development
Retirement
Death
Do you experience different timing, sequences, or different qualities of life stages? Or do you even have different ones than what is socially customary? Maybe there’s indeed a need to rethink the concept of conventional lifespan development. There will still be falling in love, having children, and many other aspects (not to forget spiritual ones). But because today many young people worry about their life ahead, adults struggle with seeing meaning in it, elderly living in apathy long after they’ve stopped to lead a functional one, and then regret or denial on the death bed. Shouldn’t life be more joyful? Without giving prescriptive answers, the following considerations from lifespan psychology may provide some additional perspectives.
When and how one progresses with what personal development step varies a lot between cultures. Even within a particular culture, if not suppressed completely, different life paths can be observed as well. However, the vast majority within a culture chooses to conform with an established “norm.” But do these norms meet the personal desires of a human being, and do they take individual developmental needs into account?
Developmental neurobiological processes are more influential in early life stages (i.e., childhood), but cultural and social learning effects increase at later life stages.
Individuals in Eastern cultures relate in a more interdependent way than a more individualistic Western understanding of the self. At the same time, though, it was found that even in the East, the desire for some autonomous identity is a universally inherent human feature. Similarly, Parental over-control frustrates children both in the US and China.
19th and 20th century Western and Eastern artists were analyzed, and it was found that Eastern artists tend to arrive at their artistic peak achievement later in life, reflecting the Eastern tradition to emphasize the process to excellence rather than the more Western focus on originality and delivery.
Low self-esteem is linked to depression and reduced subjective well-being. Still, on the other side, heightened self-esteem risks degenerating to narcissism and the need to be better than others, which results in separateness. Instead of such a discriminatory pathway to self-worth, Eastern philosophies, such as Buddhism’s mindfulness practices that promote self-compassion instead, are hopefully more and more (re-)discovered.
Mainly, lifespan development focuses on behavioral and material aspects, while it still discards concepts of expanded consciousness such as the already decades-old self-actualization theory. Also, statistical analysis prevails, and more qualitative research might help understand individuals’ life journeys better and add to a more person-centric and contextual perspective in studying lifespan development.
Economically developed regions, sometimes referred to as Western countries, make up only 20 percent of the world population, while developing economies’ population is even disproportionately continuing to grow. At the same time, economic development in the Non-Western, often collectivist societies is likely to dramatically influence the outcome of related cultures. Therefore, psychology needs to focus more on where the big changes and populations are to understand human development.
To further integrate all relevant aspects of human development, a closer collaboration between life-course sociology and life span psychology seems to be a further promising aspiration. Like the emergence of culture and art marked a new era of Homo sapiens some ten thousand years ago, maybe breakthroughs in understanding human lifespan development related to culture may define the next evolutionary steps of humanity.
I am convinced that more answers lie in how people manage to develop independently of the good opinion of others. In the past, critical thinkers were persecuted and hanged; today, these are considered heroic philosophers. Is it still worthwhile to stand up for something against the resistance of the mainstream? Surely. I believe that this is precisely one of life’s goals: to express one’s ideas, create, and put service to something bigger above one’s own desires.
The awareness for and about humanity as a whole is deliberately removed from the educational and journalistic framework. Instead, scare tactics, celebrity cults, groupthink and stereotyping are encouraged. Herd thinking seals off the boxes in the stables of the mind farms owned by the one percent that owns ninety-nine percent of global resources. In these closed mindset farms, people’s ignorance gets exploited. The domesticated herd of human livestock is fed and paid well enough to not revolt. Everything gets automated, and the thought-farming industry leaders stay mostly out of sight. Almost all of the financial means of this world are invested in businesses that help the money multiply. So, the breeding goes on and ever more extensive and efficient platforms are created for the keeping of human farm animals.
We can hold a rose despite its thorns. It’s the same with touching a defensive soul. The art lies in not attacking, respecting the thorns, and not hurting yourself. That’s the only way to make prickles unnecessary eventually.
LEARNING FROM THE INTRA-PAST
M. Sager, 2021
Acrylic on board
50 x 70 cm
Learning for life, for one’s own identity, is learner-led and requires conditions of personal freedom; this also applies when learning from the past. The free Self (one’s intrapersonal level), not culture, societal history, religion, and judgment of others around us, teaches us about our true Self.
There are three main obstacles to self-reflective learning from the intrapersonal past (or short in Awareness Intelligence terms, ‘intra-past’)
Obstacle 1: Focus on inter- and extra-personal aspects of the past
The extrapersonal level of the past can be defined as the societal scope beyond interpersonal relationships, including the historic narratives we get during raising, enculturation, and religious education. In the worst case, traditions, beliefs, religious scripts, etc., strictly adhere to fundamentalist attachment. Especially older people sometimes show a propensity towards retrospective non-self-related thoughts. One explanation is that age can cause a weakened ability to recall individual (intrapersonal) past experiences. But others possess the cognitive ability and stick to the non-intrapersonal aspects in creating their worldview. Societal pressure, lack of personal freedom and agency, and learned mechanisms to defend privileges are possible reasons. In any case, a strong emphasis on family history and ancestral heritage usually holds an individual back from updating one’s self-concept meaningfully as advantageous for adaptations to current and future situations. It is to hope that we create the conditions for individuals to be closer to themselves, which is the only way to become closer with humanity overall.
Obstacle 2: Exclusive mindfulness in the intra-present
See upcoming painting
Obstacle 3: Over-identification with the inter-present
What a significant purpose of life: Life isn’t about learning to fit in somewhere; it is about creating somebody new.
Socio-cultural identities
Of course, you may want to stay social and cooperative with people in your life. However, with time, the nature of these relationships might transform as your awareness regenerates. Separation from yourself and others means, in a psycho-spiritual way, that you let go of your identity, which is based on social conformity and cultural beliefs that would be misbeliefs in a different culture. You also must let go of attachment to others’ judgments, which are opinions only and have little if anything to do with truth. By distancing yourself from the idealized role you have learned to assume during all the years of education, socialization, and enculturation, you begin to see who you really are.
Don’t waste your thoughts on interpreting equipment, façade styles, and fashions. They are not relevant to our true selves, and they go as fast as they came. We are not our social personalities. Clinging to our social identity and old ways of thinking about ourselves makes us, in any case, matter less than we deserve. Artificial rules that protect selfish interests are not natural laws of life. So don’t take them so seriously!
Children are dependent on the care received from their parents and other adults in the culture they are born into. For them, inter-psychological learning, the influence of other people is unavoidable. Their survival depends on following their caregivers. Such dependencies should not exist anymore later in life, though. An adult person can re-build their own identity intra-psychologically. There is a possibility, even a necessity to recognize your socio-cultural independence. It is a trap to let others’ opinions and beliefs define one. Therefore, such an awareness allows you to free yourself from backward-related definitions of your person by others.
Losing one’s identity
When I moved abroad and ended up being on myself in a completely different culture, there was nobody and nothing anymore that would have supported and validated my identity at that time. For my new environment far away from my former social networks, jobs, and possessions that had defined me to a significant extent for a long time, too, I then was left to be just an unknown foreigner. Therefore, I could not and did not have to live up to any story anymore. What an opportunity. I’ve realized how foolish it had been to build one’s personality too much on the unstable ground of externals.
Meanwhile, having left most of the external things and values behind, there has remained one true identity-giving source: The inner self that connects all of us on a deeper human level. I’ve found this true self when mentalizing back to before I had grown into an adult body, before I was associated with a particular social status and related privileges, and before I started to hold on to a variety of achievements and acquisitions. Then, literally as an alien in a foreign country, I became aware of what was left, what will always be left, and I mentally returned to the core of whom I am: The consciousness that is all and my origin of life. For all my life, I was looking for happiness. Then I found meaning. And when I accepted meaning, happiness became meaningless. That’s when I started to really enjoy life again; joy through the effort to create awareness-intelligently an identity instead of blindly assuming one that’s tried to be assigned to me. That’s also when I better understood what it means to be an artist.
When you experience meaninglessness, low motivation, and urges to give up, it is helpful to check the extra-future element and probe its awaring, for example, as follows. Ask yourself: Am I creating in line with life, the life that continues in all human evolution beyond my family, my party, my nation, my race, etc., or do I identify with such social constructs on which can’t be hold on to in the perishable physical world? If it is the latter, feelings of meaninglessness could stem from such a misidentification. One might feel that clearly when losing somebody close when having lost a job, or being rejected from a social group. We must die to our ego during a lifetime voluntarily. As we shift from socio-cultural group identity to a universally valid life membership, we will have found our purpose in life as well. The ego cannot be overcome by disabling the mind (as sometimes advertised in meditation classes). Selflessness is achieved by thinking awareness-intelligently about the egoless self, through non-transactionality in meeting others and focusing on a mutually beneficial future in all humanity’s interest.
Achieving a symmetrical, congruent (awareness-intelligent) identity
We can clearly feel that we separate mental awareness from bodily sensations and instead picture the wholeness and infinity of life. We can change our way of thinking. The most profound, impactful, and sustainable way to change is to change the layer from where thought arises: awareness. The human condition is no longer dependent on social identity alone. It learns to integrate the three modes of the intra-past, the inter-present, and the extra-future into increased and undivided awareness (for the detailed explanation, see https://mathias-sager.com/tag/awareness-intelligence/). As our thoughts and actions become more symmetrical (and our business and private cards more congruent), life will never feel like a lie again.
Becoming a genuine leader is founded on mastering self-leadership and being at peace with oneself and the world. To serve as a role model, one must be ready to give up their title and position. Too dissonant can a professional identity become with the aware self. How could one ever enjoy people who admire rather their title-based authority and social status rather than knowing about their creativity, vulnerability, and loving character in the first place?
This painting is a suggestion for the symbol that could represent the novel term and concept of Awareness Intelligence™. It’s time for a new understanding of awareness, instead of maintaining old and incomplete notions of it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said more than a hundred years ago that history should be banned from school. I agree in the sense that the common issue of glorifying the past and using it to legitimate and reinforce established power structures, for example in politics, is hindering real improvement. The world needs new solutions to old problems. A spirit-based awareness to overcome ego-based identification is needed. Rather than closing down for victories, humanity needs to open up for progress. Just because things are our culture, they are not necessarily good. Good is what increases awareness.
For the original research and related articles about Awareness Intelligence, you can visit www.mathias-sager.com
Life is proving us constantly that peace is possible to the extent human awareness is embracing it. Consequently, if all the world is scoped-in for ambitions of peace, a peaceful world indeed becomes attainable. An awaria can come through the dissolution of the illusion of separated and separating personal and societal identities, which would not be bounded together by life across times. It will be a future world in which all human beings are aware of their shared awareness of life. Thanks to intelligent awareness, the relational and temporal modes of life will be better understood, accepted as an essential truth, and consequently being acted upon for individual well-being, collective thriving, and the common good. Awarian life is possible thanks to the systematic and continuous practice of Awareness Intelligence, the chief liberating and humanitarian enabler of a new age.
Having learned English, French, and Japanese while living and working in different cultures, and as a global citizen, psychologist, and artist, languages (words, images, and the heart) are vital for me every day. Research into the psychology of language, or psycholinguistics, has helped better understand the mental aspects of language and speech with new and innovative implications on how we approach learning from a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral level.
Language organizes thoughts
You can perceive the world with your five senses and experience feelings and emotions without words. However, Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” which I find accurate. What if everything is just “cool?” Reports from people losing language as a result, for example, of brain tumors, evidence that when they cannot describe the world with words anymore, it essentially remains unchanged and, for that matter, unchangeable. Grasping, developing, and changing concepts requires analysis and interpretation of reality, which is accomplished through structured language. Only through organizing one’s thoughts can we fix ideas, reflect on, and monitor them. This inner, explicitly linguistic thinking enables consciousness to become awareness (for my differentiation between consciousness and awareness, see https://mathias-sager.com/2021/05/02/soulfires-flames/). Unfortunately, blissful quitting of thinking in meditation or distractions seems to be more in vogue than thinking critically about one’s thinking; for me, the main challenge of humanity. Again, we may think without language, but language lets us know that we are thinking.
The language of images
There are around 7000 languages spoken in the world today. However, there are many more different languages like specialty languages (e.g., computer languages), sign languages, even smell, and the language of images and music. As an artist, I have a visual vocabulary, which sometimes is not translatable to any words that I’d know. My inner speech while painting often isn’t either in German or English, but purely of images. I love to switch to the mode where I utter thoughts with colors. As my paintings and accompanying texts illustrate, the artistic language of colors, forms, and textures is more direct, compact, shorter, and faster than the concepts described in words.
I like that my artistic language for me is more independent from socio-cultural conventions. Although language helps to connect and build communities, it is used to exclude and manipulate. For example, my daughter and I are told not to use German anymore, which constitutes a strategy of maternal gatekeeping and parental alienation. [-> I love you, Natalie! As always, this work is for you!]
The ambiguity of language
The ambiguity of language can easily cause erroneous thinking. That is probably why many of us discover that life hadn’t turned out as we were told and had planned when we were younger. For example, all the promises about happiness primarily addressing only the hedonistic aspects of the term. The same with love; are we always clear what we mean by it: romantic, affectionate, familiar, playful, or selflessly compassionate?
Any language is possibly imperfect, so we all need to find the combinations of levels of perceptions, spoken words, and expressive means that serve us well.
A man who loved lonely, carefree hikes across the country, noticed one day a strangely shaped plant in a narrow, elongated hedge between a meadow and a field. It seemed as if this spectacular plant was calling the man to it. With a queasy feeling, but driven by his even stronger curiosity, the man approached the plant.
“Wow, what kind of creature are you!” The man muttered to himself, barely audible. “What are you staring at me like that?” The plant replied immediately and unexpectedly. The man was just able to support himself on a neighboring branch, otherwise, he would have twisted backward as a result of his recoil. Frozen in his position, he asked back: “Who are you?”, to which he was replied: “I am an intelligent species and all of my leaves are intelligent”. The man was completely spellbound. He stared at the vegetation and it struck him that its strange shape came from a one-sided collection of shoots and leaves. These all stretched to the same point a little laterally above the theoretical center of the plant. In fact, half of the plant was missing due to the one-sided growth. The crowd on the overgrown side was so dense that one could no longer see the individual booms. Strikingly, the creature did not simply grow towards the light of the open area, but only in the direction in which the agricultural field was, and not the natural meadow.
“Why are all your shoots and leaves crowding in the same direction when there is more light than enough for everyone in the other direction?” Asks the man. “We are just intelligent and know how to participate in modern advances. To the north we can even get hold of some agricultural pesticides,” boasted a particularly exposed leaf of the bush. “But isn’t this too narrow, light-robbing, and dangerous for you?” The man wonders. “Not at all. We were even told that this is good for us. Too bad for the stupid plants, who just can’t understand that and still behave according to their so outdated, primitive nature. If the lower rungs are not too lazy, then they can grow and also position themselves better ». As the man could see, this indeed appeared to be the case. The plant had already grown extraordinarily for the time of year. And yet it could be seen that the deeper the layers, the more stunted the leaves.
The man had never seen anything like it. The plant seemed so completely unnatural to him. Why should plants be so intelligent? The man thought about it for a long time, but couldn’t find an answer to the question. A few days later, on his wanderings, the man passed the hedge of the intelligent plant again. The man wanted to ask whether the shoots and leaves could actually decide for themselves, or whether the plant as a whole would dictate the direction. Just as the man was about to leave, he was approached by a farmer who had dismounted a little way away from a tractor. Equipped with hedge trimmers, wooden stakes and wire, he trudged straight towards the hedge. Without waiting for the man to say hello, the farmer announced sternly and bustlingly: “Good day. So here are my loved ones; today it’s your turn. If I only had such hedges, I would have nothing else to do but cut them back; my crop would be full at all times. Ha, ha, ha … ”, came with a loud sound from the farmer’s mouth. Half intimidated, half doubting himself, the man did not mention his experience with the intelligent plant and soon said goodbye.
On the way home, the whole story seemed like a dream to the man. Nonetheless, he kept addressing plants, although he has never seen one as strangely shaped as the intelligent plant. These wonderful, balanced forms of life showed him all the possibilities of natural growth. However, they remained silent, which the man enjoyed very much. #art #artist painting #figurative #abstract
The collective human delusion assumes ‘spacetime’ instead of ‘humantime’ as the fabric of the human psychic universe. Why should space be the component to be studied and mastered as human beings? It’s not the geographical but psychological distance that causes human troubles. I always conclude that the dimensions relevant to humanity are how we relate to our species, life, and how we refer to time. Therefore, our awareness should comprise combining social and temporal dimensions rather than the combination with space. Of course, the achievements of physicalism and technocracy in modern science are fantastic; they brought us, among other things, inventions of the sort of the Internet of things and so forth. However, I think it is time for the internet of human souls, an endeavor that needs a different type of intelligence. Rather than following the tradition of physics and studying the deconstruction and mechanics of the material world, I suggest deciphering the logic of humantime and its effects on psychological well-being, creative performance, and the peace of the collective mind. Humanity would be well advised to invest more in empowering humanness to address known social problems instead of using nationalized budgets for space forces and other armed defenses to fight the unknown material.
Do you realize that the pendulum switched? The future is here. There were only a few gaps to close, why even the digital generation has not been aware of losing their possibility to pull. It is definitely history that with free choice we can selectively draw from the endless streams of tunneled information to which we are bound. In the past you could find out where things were coming from without having to reveal your own origin / location. Today this is exactly the opposite. Today, in every area of life, things are pushed to us by the invisible, de facto uncontrollable global and artificial intelligence-enabled online content and service providers. These pushes are non-locatable and ubiquitous at the same time. There is no “where” anymore, except for ourselves, where we are assigned IP addresses, IDs, and usernames.
Our lifestyles and businesses now definitely got dominated by the rules of a (dystopian?) virtual world. This connectivity-enforced new disconnectedness will leave us for some time with mere memories of having lived in an in-person-world, where citizens had the choice between onsite and online services, where customers used to be king, where people were asked about the ‘why’ behind their data, and where they exchanged goods for tangible values. Internet platforms are inherently gravitating towards dominant market positions. Gone are the times where monopolistic situations and the related risk of abuse of power could be regulated, gone are the times where the “where” could be located and where the truth could be verified. Welcome to the no “where” generation.
By the way:
In the course of the upcoming ongoing mutations of viruses and the expected communication of the continuation of the contact restrictions, will we then receive a QUOTE FOR GOING OUT? Will citizens receive x tickets for cultural events such as concerts and museums, y vouchers for parties and z tokens for dining out? In this way, seditious uprisings by the people can be prevented (we’ve already come to terms with the privileged opportunities of richer citizens), and the online industry does not have to forego the continuation of the profits it has made since the beginning of the Corona crisis …
There may not be all bad:-). However, for alternative, possibly more humanistic approaches, there are a lot of ideas you can find on my website www.mathias-sager.com.
Dangerous highway (M. Sager 2021, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm)
People who are not able to coordinate complex multi-limb movements with their bodies are called disabled and are not allowed to do certain things like, for example, driving a car as it would be too dangerous for others. But people who are unable to coordinate complex multi-perspective situations in their minds are allowed to run organizations and countries.
In contrast to a leg-focused person who forgets about the arm-movement and therefore is realistically considered a risk for driving a vehicle, a single-minded career, for example, of exclusively fighting for one particular group’s interest is likely to be admired. Standing up for one group to succeed over others from a humanitarian perspective, however, is like prioritizing eating over drinking. Thus, the organism of humankind is doomed to die.
If the economy is not in constant struggle anyway, then during Corona times there are increased signs of war effects. Understanding the wider context is important. It takes critical thinking, courage, and a belief in positive change. But how? My repeated lesson is: win self-control instead of economic wars so that everyone benefits.
The virtual realm was slowly but surely occupied, administered and borrowed again by the large technology and telecommunications corporations. Compared with the acquisition of the physical land at that time, the www landowners have now also established themselves. The main shopping streets are no longer in the city center, but on the well-known online markets. With the cell phone in everyone’s pocket, cyber space has become an omnipresent and real shopping, experience, work, and communication space [1]. Despite the predominance of monopolistic Internet providers and platforms, the virtual world was not yet fully conquered. There were also alternatives (such as platform cooperatives [2, 3]) and free web addresses for development. Certain data, the oil of today, were not yet in the hands of the information processors, although these global companies have probably already known more than the respective governments themselves for some time. The race for the few not yet occupied network areas and their positioning was definitely still in full swing.
A lot of money is invested in Silicon Valley, where investors slowly become impatient as new investment gains, e.g. in the area of social media, didn’t realize surely and rapidly enough. In general, the profit-seeking economy was overheating. I feared war because war is profitable at this level [4]. With Corona, a lot is now also going online and the major providers were able to step in quickly. Small and medium-sized businesses, on the other hand, have to close or sell cheaply to investors who then earn double during the rebuilding; this war effect works well with corona measures.
Fortunately, the total mortality does not seem to be any higher this year than in other years, with Corona or not [5]; The idea of a disease that would “solve” the “problem” of an aging population and thus an unproductive and pension-devouring population would be terrible. Where it is not about the digital economy but about natural resources, we will continue to see traditional wars. In most countries, possibly thanks to measures such as related to Corona and the resulting asset redistribution, these are no longer necessary. There is no need for conventional armies of soldiers today. To dictate the direction of the crowd, digital distraction, incitement, and advertising are also sufficient [6, 7, 8] *. The battle for people’s attention has been very advanced for a long time: Advertisement and monitoring at any online occasion, anywhere, anytime. Technology-related ever shorter attention spans of people only make them more prone to following whoever shouts the loudest (or who can spend the most money on positioning of content).
Hopefully, after the shutting down of the traditional local offline economy in favor of the global online tech world, there will be some calm again, respectively enough capital of the capital holders will have increased and the threads in the puppet play of the global digital economy under control as desired. In that case, if the widening gap between rich and poor [8, 9, 10] does not lead to local unrest, a lot of blood spilling and the environment might have been spared for a moment; apart from technology / energy consumption and psychological factors, which also lead to mortality.
At least, a physical war attack is difficult for the individual ordinary citizen to fend off; However, staying psychologically healthy is always in our individual control given the appropriate knowledge and discipline (11, 12, 13) and depends little on economic factors (14, 15, 16). Perhaps psychology will soon be taught in schools instead of the history of battles and wars [17]. I would still be for such an approach. The way to peace seems to lie in the ability of each individual to self-control and to be moderate through a reorientation towards intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation [18 – 24]. In this sense, the focus would shift from technology and a capitalistic economy back to people [25, 26], and so-called humanitarian crises (crises that are actually economically caused) would be prevented in the long term.
Is there any hope of change? Yes and no. The individual psychological forces to establish and approve systems that disadvantage the general population are very strong. Unfortunately, it is often the particularly disadvantaged who justify authoritarian forces [27]. Whether, despite technology, enough fears can be distributed locally in political and social structures to keep people fearful enough not to wake up, remains questionable. It is to be hoped that the critical thinking, courage and belief in positive changes that are also widespread, can ultimately prevail. It is important to strengthen the self-confidence of each individual; Humanistic, transpersonal psychology, art, and sport are feasible ways to do this, which I also consistently advocate.
* Once more self-serving fake news? Not too credible? Not enough likes? Would you like more information? You are welcome to read the scientific sources and backgrounds in the resources listed below (which is not available even in renowned media). This is important to me, although many readers can no longer muster the attention span even for this length and type of text. I hope you find a lot of exciting things about it, and thank you for your attention. Please share the text if you find this valuable. All the best – Mathias Sager
