On the road

From Laugavegur to Ouchvegur in 44 years

Leave a comment

Those who walked the Laugavegur in 1982 – 44 years ago – spent four days on their own, apart from the hut wardens. There was no need to book online or use a bank card; the hut warden checked you in on the spot and payment was made in cash.

In 2001, I invited my family to join me on the Laugavegur hike, and it was now necessary to book the huts through Ferðafélag Íslands by email, providing names and ages. This meant that Ferðafélag Íslands was able to provide important advice for hikers – in this case, the recommendation to refrain from the trek, as my son was only 1½ years old. However, the association accepted our indication of prior experience, as this was the third time I was undertaking the trek.

In 2001, the rivers were carrying even more water. The water in the River Þröngá reached up to the hips back then, whereas this year it only came up to the knees. To successfully use the three-point technique when crossing the river, a shovel handle was more suitable, as telescopic sticks were simply swept away by the raging current. What was strange at the time, however, was that – contrary to previous experience – there was suddenly an Icelandic four-wheel-drive car at every river crossing, with a driver inside who had nothing better to do with his time than stare through the windscreen. When I asked the warden at Emstrur what had got into the Icelanders – given that they now only viewed nature through a windscreen – the warden remarked that my son was the youngest person to have travelled this trail since the settlement of Iceland. In other words: Ferðafélag Íslands felt compelled to send a supervisor to the river crossings to rescue the children from their dreadful parents in an emergency.

By 2009, the impact of tourism was already impossible to ignore. All the huts have an entrance hall where wet clothes are supposed to be left. This was no longer possible at the Emstrur hut, as the entrance hall was crammed to the ceiling with Samsonite suitcases. The owners of the Samsonite suitcases hiked from hut to hut carrying a small backpack, whilst a bus transported the Samsonite suitcases from hut to hut. I’ll never forget the lady who opened her Samsonite suitcase, took out a make-up case along with a strange roll, hung the roll on a nail outside, unrolled it – whereupon it turned out to be a roll-out mirror – and used it to do her make-up for dinner.

It was therefore to be expected that one day mass tourism would also take effect on the Laugavegur. The ever-increasing influx then led to there now being three huts available for overnight stays at Emstrur, and the hut warden at each hut being relocated to a separate hut, where he could now sell a variety of drinks and snacks.

And so, the negative aspects of mass tourism have also made their way onto the Laugavegur. The ascents and descents along the trek – which used to be quite safe underfoot – have now been worn down so much by the countless hikers that the utmost care is required to avoid slipping. One day, crampons may even be necessary here. The route has also been altered. The route from Emstrur to Þórsmörk once ran along the canyon, offering magnificent views; now it runs further east, featuring numerous ascents and descents. To compensate for this, the track near Landmannalaugar has been upgraded to a walking path through the lava boulders.

Today
In the past

The huts have been hit even harder by the effects of mass tourism. Use of the kitchen is now prohibited in all huts between 11 pm and 7 am; at the Landmannalaugar hut, the water is even turned off during this time, which also affects the toilet flushing system there. Fortunate indeed is the person who can successfully hold it in until then. The price for an overnight stay in a mattress dormitory has also risen slightly; whilst in 1982 it was still in the single-digit euro range, it now stands at around €110 per person – more than double the cost of a single room in a 4-star hotel in Paris. Another curious phenomenon is that guests have no internet access at any of the huts; it’s only available again once you’re away from the hut. Apparently, this doesn’t apply to the hut warden, as they have internet access at all times.

And so, over the course of 44 years, Laugavegur became Ouchvegur.

deIn 44 Jahren von Laugarvegur zu Auweiavegur

On the road

The core group of the Hreystimannafélag in Iceland

Leave a comment

It has been reported that a self-driving car is now even being tested in Europe, one that no longer has any pedals or a steering wheel. Isn’t it about time we were reminded a little of why the human species was once endowed with a brain, hands and legs? Who better to illustrate this than Ragnar Ómarsson, Jón Rúnar Arason and Sveinbjörn Gröndal, the core members of the Hreystimannafélag Islands association.

I’ll never forget that first encounter on the northern edge of Vatnajökull in the early 1980s. Thick fog shrouded the scree slope in front of the tent as three figures emerged from the mist. Three young Icelanders were pushing their bicycles down the steep scree slope, where the rocks were as big as watermelons. They chattered, laughed, and were in high spirits. They gave a brief wave in my direction: “Hey. Hey hey,” and vanished back into the mist, heading towards Ódáðahraun. The hundreds of meandering trickles of the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river had now dried up for the second day running, and my water bottle had therefore been empty for two days. So it can only be the effects of feverish spells. Where else would chattering and laughing voices of several people come from on the northern edge of Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier, on the edge of the impassable Ódáðahraun, the ‘Misdeed Lava Field’? So now the hallucinations are beginning, as a result of thirst and fever.

It smelled of hearty stew. How on earth could the intense aroma of a freshly cooked stew be wafting from a tent at Askja? Off-roading hadn’t been invented yet, and there wasn’t a single car to be seen anywhere near Askja. The chattering and laughing voices from the tent sounded familiar to me, and the three bicycles outside the tent suggested that the young Icelanders must be the hallucination I’d had three days earlier on the northern edge of Vatnajökull. Three ordinary bicycles, the sort you see in European pedestrian zones, no mountain bikes, no gears, nothing of the sort. Three old, simple bicycles, right in the middle of Ódáðahraun. And so began my acquaintance with Ragnar, Jón Rúnar and Sveinbjörn, the core group of Hreystimannafélag Islands.

In Iceland, it was possible to send parcels from the BSI terminal in Reykjavik, which were then delivered by 4×4 buses to the huts in the Icelandic highlands. This way, it was possible to prepare a vegetarian Irish stew from fresh vegetables and potatoes right in the middle of Ódáðahraun, without having to lug the ingredients through the wilderness for days on end. I invited the Hreystimenn to join me in a few days’ time to celebrate my name day, which I intended to mark in the bar of the Reynihlíð Hotel in Reykjahlíð on Lake Mývatn. 

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, Ragnar, Rúnar and Sveinbjörn were standing outside the tent on the shore of Lake Mývatn and invited me to go for a boat trip, as they had a surprise for me to mark my name day. So we made our way to a jetty where a small rowing boat was moored. The wind was rough, and the Hreystimenn had to row hard against the waves. My offer to have a go at rowing was declined, with reference to my name day. Then they hauled in the oars, gathered round the middle bench of the boat, and invited me to sit with them. Sveinbjörn pulled a pile of colourful wooden sticks from his jacket and we played a long game of Mikado on the swaying deck, right in the middle of Mývatn. At evening, in the bar of the Reynihlíð Hotel, back when coffee was still served in the bars from half-litre tin cans and alcohol was not yet permitted to be sold, the bar was packed with Icelanders, for tourism, too, was still in its infancy. It was a time when Icelanders who happened to bump into one another would pass the time singing Icelandic songs in a polyphonic choir, and to such a standard that it would have done the Regensburger Domspatzen credit, without even having to rehearse first. And so I got to know all the well-known Icelandic songs in a single evening.

In an interview in 1988, the core group expressed their surprise at those newcomers who had gone to the trouble of transporting their bicycles across continents to enjoy a summer holiday amidst Iceland’s beautiful and unspoilt countryside, yet had mistakenly chosen the Ring Road as their destination. Little did they know at the time that one day streams of tourists would also be pouring into the highlands.

In the early 1980s, if you went hiking from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk, you would be completely alone for four days. The sense of dismay refused to subside when, barely 30 years later, one had to watch as one convoy after another disappeared into the block lava, busloads of people on the trail to Þórsmörk, each adorned with a tiny miniature rucksack, whilst a service bus with a mobile kitchen prepared to drive the necessary equipment to the next hut. The entrance hall of the huts, intended for leaving wet equipment before entering the main room, was now blocked in Emstrur by Samsonite suitcases stacked from floor to ceiling. Thus, upon her arrival, a tourist was even able to take a make-up bag and a strange roll out of her suitcase, trudge over to a wooden wall opposite, hang the roll on a nail, and unroll it, which turned out to be a rolled-up mirror.

There were more pleasant encounters on the Laugavegur; for example, in the early 1980s, there was this fantastic Swiss man named Bruno, who had given up on life, and who, at Rupnabrekkukvisl, was marvelling at a bouquet of flowers on the opposite bank. To cross the river, he tied his rucksack to himself with a long rope, threw the rucksack behind a protruding boulder just before a bend in the river, jumped after it and let the stream carry him to the opposite bank. On the opposite bank, there was indeed a bouquet of flowers, presumably left there for those Japanese tourists who, at the time, had been crossing the river in a Lada and had been killed in an accident.

In the years that followed, Ragnar and Sveinbjörn organised a decommissioned US Army Dodge from military stocks in Belgium and painted it in bright red and yellow. Perhaps one or two of you still remember this vehicle, which caused quite a stir even by Icelandic standards. The question of whether, as peace-loving people, they should buy a military vehicle of all things was discussed at length by the members at the time. It was finally decided when someone put forward the argument that if all peace-loving people were to buy up all military vehicles, there could be no more wars. The US Army Dodge was purchased in Belgium and transported to Iceland.

Mynd: Magnús Skarphéðinsson

From that point on,Ragnar and Sveinbjörn drove their Dodge to their operations. One day, Ragnar boarded a whaling ship, climbed into the crow’s nest, chained himself to it with iron chains, and threw the key into the sea. It was very cold and a storm was brewing, so the sailors realised that it would be too dangerous to climb up to the crow’s nest to cut the chain with bolt cutters and forcibly remove this troublemaker from the ship. It was therefore advised that such actions would be better postponed until the following day. So it came to pass, and Ragnar gritted his teeth through the storm until the next day.     

In the wake of Hreystimenn, new perspectives kept opening up, ones that were certainly capable of setting new standards. Unforgettable was the party in the attic flat of an old house in Reykjavik, where, accompanied by vegetarian lasagne and a huge tub of punch containing every fruit and spirit Iceland had to offer. The same LP was played over and over again throughout the evening and into the night, emitting nothing but the calls of whales, and they didn’t miss the chance to flip that same LP over again and again, so we could listen to the other side once more. Until, at some point, a party guest burst into the room, pointing out that an aurora borealis could be seen outside. So all the party guests climbed through the toilet’s skylight, lay down side by side on the sloping roof, and watched from this makeshift cinema the dance of the elves, who were performing in yellow dresses that day.   

deHreystimannafélag Islands

On the road

ZKN3 – Slip box according to Niklas Luhmann by Dr. phil. Daniel Lüdecke

Leave a comment

Not only scientists, but also pupil, students, bookworm and scribbler feel completely overwhelmed by the flood of information, unable to make sense of the abundance of material they have read, even if they want to refer back to a particular passage at a later date for a specific reason. If one is willing to save the wealth of reading material for later access, at least the haptic learner has the option of marking the text excerpt in the book with a highlighter and bookmarking the page. However, this method does not record the reason why this passage was marked, so the haptic reader has to rely on their memory to know where the text they need is located. If this knowledge is lost, the search begins by opening every page with a possible bookmark. This is very time-consuming and not only interrupts the actual purpose of the search, but can also be fruitless if the search is abandoned in frustration due to the abundance of bookmarks

It is therefore a great advantage if the searcher has a convenient tool that replaces bookmarks and enables a quick and targeted search using literature sources and keywords. Sociologist Niklas Luhmann once replaced bookmarks with a “Zettelkasten” (slip box, file card system), which inspired Dr. Daniel Lüdecke to develop an application that makes it much easier and more effective to collect and manage important text passages, excerpts and thoughts, as well as to subsequently use this text collection for text production. The applicationis free of charge, has no restrictions on its duration or scope of use, and may be used for both private and professional purposes. The user interface can be selected in German, English, Spanish and Portuguese as required, and any alphabet can be used for the collection of texts.

The ZKN3 slip box can be downloaded for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. The download link is available in both German and English.

According to Dr. Daniel Lüdecke, the installed file card system can be used to collect, clearly archive and manage literature, text passages and quotations. Each card is provided with source references and keywords, making it easier to link cards with similar topics and to find and search for specific cards. The manufacturer adds: ‘In addition to automatically generated references that link thematically related cards, the card index offers the option of creating manual references to other cards. Furthermore, similar to Luhmann’s practice, cards can be continued. The so-called follow-up cards offer another way to structure the card index and create relevant cross-references and thematic clusters.’

After successful installation, a new file card system can be created. The user is then provided with input fields for notes, keywords, references, follow-up cards, literature, titles, etc., which are still empty.

A possible approach to recording found text passages will be demonstrated using a small example. Although the demonstration does not cover the entire range of functions offered by the software, it should suffice for an initial introduction.

A text that is to be saved for future reference is created using the ‘New’ button and then either entered or, if it is available electronically, copied and pasted and given a suitable title. The keywords found in the text are then marked, added to the keyword directory and the reference entered in the ‘Authors´ field. If the keyword is already in the keyword directory, it is marked in the ‘Keywords’ tab and added to the keyword list of the note using the “Add” button. In the same way, an existing literature source can be marked in the ‘Authors’ tab and added to the note.

In this way, an extensive bibliography with text sources and keywords is created over time, which can be used for later research. For example, if texts are searched for by title, the title sought is selected in the ‘Titles’ tab, whereupon the content is displayed with bibliographic information.

If a literature source is selected in the ‘Authors’ tab, the user receives a list of all the notes recorded for it.

If the user is interested in the content of a note from this source, they select the corresponding note in the list by its title and receive the content of the note with the bibliographic reference and the keywords contained in the text.

The list of keywords also provides information on how often a keyword is found in the notes recorded.

Writers, pupils and students can also use the notes compiled in this way for text production (essays, term papers, etc.) via the ‘Outliner function, where an outline is created and notes are assigned to the outline points, supplemented by headings and additional own texts in the form of comments.

Niklas Luhmann once admitted in an interview: ‘Without the notes, i.e. just by thinking, I wouldn’t come up with such ideas. Of course, my head is necessary to write down the ideas, but it cannot be held solely responsible for them.’ Experience shows that this applies not only to him, but to everyone. Isn’t it?

de – Zettelkasten nach Niklas Luhmann von Dr. Phil. Daniel Lüdecke
On the road

Thank you very much!

Leave a comment

I would like to express my thanks to the pharmacy company Kerecis in Ísafjörður. My friend, Dr. Roget in France and myself took part in the in-vivo test of the Viruxal nasal spray for 2 years, the production of which was discontinued at the end of 2022. All our family members fell ill with Covid-19 despite multiple vaccinations; only Dr. Roget and I were spared

On the road

Last will of a bird

1 Comment
Copyright (c) Peter Ettl

When I go to death
don’t talk about me
don’t listen to others speech
Let me take my rest
I have never found in life
Sentences from my lips
always died before birth.

When I go to death
don’t let others walk behind
don’t let others go ahead
Leave me in that place
as  it was in life
Never I had followed others
and I refuse
that others follow me.

When I go to death
don’t set a stone in place
don’t write my name
Let me stay in death
how I stayed in life
I wish, that my friends
visit me freely:
the snow,the sun
the rain, the wind.

On the road

A little round trip

Leave a comment
Number of reinfections, Source: https://science.orf.at/stories/3212535/

For interested friends, I have compiled the data from August 2021 to April 16, 2022 in a table and made a comparison of France, Germany, Tunisia, Portugal, Austria and Iceland. The data is based on the Johns Hopkins University statistics.

The data was taken from here. The notes on the data source (translated into English):

“Note: All key figures depend on the number of tests carried out and the recording and can only be compared to a limited extent. No guarantee for the correctness and topicality of the data.

…

Statistics from Johns Hopkins University are used for corona infections in over 200 countries worldwide. Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is a private university in Baltimore, Maryland. Data from the JHU’s “COVID-19 Data Repository” is used by health authorities and the media worldwide as a source for spreading COVID-19. Worldwide corona statistics from the JHU are accessed via the freely accessible Our World in Data dataset.

What data does the JHU collect?

The JHU’s COVID-19 data set is maintained by a team at the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE). Since January 22, 2020, the JHU has been publishing updates on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths for all countries worldwide.

How up-to-date is the data?

The JHU updates the data set several times a day. Individual data is obtained from governments, national and sub-national authorities around the world. There may be a delay between the update of the nationally available data and the data from the JHU.

How are the incidence values ​​calculated?

To calculate the 7-day incidence, the new infections from the last 7 days are added up and converted to 100,000 inhabitants (divided by the official number of inhabitants, multiplied by 100,000).

Why the change from ECDC to JHU?

The ECDC announced in November that it would switch from a daily to a weekly update cycle. In order to continue to provide daily updated figures for worldwide COVID-19 infections and deaths, the figures will come from the JHU from December onwards. For a few countries for which the JHU does not have any data, the figures are still obtained weekly from the ECDC.”

On the road

A child of society

Leave a comment

troll-imadeWEB-1The man with the tattered coat opens his briefcase, taking out a few sheets of paper and walks round the room to offer them to some of the customers seated at the tables.  Probably an insurance salesman looking for new customers he can hoodwink into buying his very latest special offer.   30 years ago, Hresso café was far from busy in high season.  The tourists had yet to arrive, while most Icelanders spent their holidays in the far-flung corners of the earth, giving young people a chance to earn a bit of pocket money during their holidays.  At that time, Hresso café was therefore mainly popular with scribblers, who spent hours there filling sheets of paper with their words, leaning on one side next to their white iron coffee pot.   At this time, you could only buy alcohol in State shops, and coffee was still served in large half-litre pots which kept the scribblers from dehydrating over the next four hours.  What’s more, it was not recommended to drink too many pots of this powerful beverage, and those of you who have survived the nightmare of caffeine poisoning, know what I am talking about.

Ragnar struck up a lively conversation with the man.  As it turned out, he was not an insurance salesman, but a poet trying to sell his latest poems.  The man wanted to know if his poems were not good enough, since Ragnar had not bought a single sheet, to which Ragnar replied that he already had these poems, before closing with these words:  ‘He is a child of society’

Haldor Laxness, had already developed philosophical considerations on the term society. In his book ‘Í túninu heima’, he looked into what might really be meant by this word:

‘Society didn’t even exist when I grew up.  Today, we would like to believe that it exists, in order to improve it, despite the fact that its address is unknown and it’s impossible to summon it to a court.  A while ago, I asked an intelligent acquaintance, if they knew what type of association society was: the people, the Government, the parliament, or perhaps the sum of these?  My friend frowned, then finally answered: “Doesn’t this word rather refer to the police?”

Today, subsequent generations know that while society does indeed exist, it cannot be improved.  Because what Albert Einstein said holds true:  “To be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself”. To which Niklas Luhmann added:

“ … What is really misleading about the mental state of members of society is the convergence of their ideas and concepts. We naively think that if most men share the same ideas or feelings, these must be fair.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Convergence on its own is no guarantee of intelligence or mental health.”

Society can be described by the fact that its members have activities that are successful enough to attract attention.  As for attention, it can be measured by the mental state as recorded by the daily TV ratings.  Over time, we have simply forgotten that communities originally formed in order to find sufficient food, protect themselves from the threat of other species and learn from one another.  With the disappearance of these needs, these healthy tissues have become cancerous tumours which we refer to as a society.  For example, if we were to compare the relationship between the number of people killed in the name of good, and those killed in the name of evil, we would find this difficult, because of those whom we don’t consider as criminals.

Bjarni_Bernharður-150x150The white iron coffee pots of yesteryear have long since disappeared, along with the scribblers.   Café Hresso is now always busy and full of young people and tourists who prefer coca-cola or a yellow liquid that has a certain resemblance to beer.

And the man?  He is still there.   However, now he stands in front of the door, against the wall, next to the ’Austurstræti stand.  The poet and painter Bjarni Bernharður still sells his self-published poems (Egóútgáfan), now available in the form of bound collections, together with a bar code and a ISBN number.

The kiss of the bat

I was living
in a dark cavern
in my childhood

When the bat
kissed me

That warm kiss
sealed my destiny
I took the path
of cold nights

on the boundary
between light and darkness

Bjarni-3Bjarni Bernhardur sells his latest collection ‘Koss Leðurblökunnar’, with his own illustrations for 2,000 crowns, but he also has English versions of his poems, for tourists. There is no greater proof that in his sixty-fifth year of life, Bjarni Bernharður is still a hopeless optimist.

Translation: Jackie Dobble

deEin Kind in der Gesellschaft

frUn enfant dans la société

On the road

Does Bielefeld exist?

Leave a comment

troll-imadeWEB-1‘Listen carefully and repeat” was to be the phrase he remembered most when he began to learn German.   Critics suggest that with these words, he would have already learnt the basics of what characterises and distinguishes German schools.  Of course it’s not really true, as the example of a city such as Bielefeld proves.  But there are other German cities, such as Bonn, or any other city that has around 320,000 inhabitants.  So let us take one of these cities, let us take Bielefeld as representative of all German cities with an approximate population of 320,000 people.

The city of poets and bookworms

Eymundsson-150x150Bielefeld has 129 publishers, which in 2010 published a total of 1,505 books, including 350 works of poetry and literature alone, then 286 translations of foreign literature and poetry and in the field of philosophy, 16 works written by the city’s own philosophers, as well as 15 translations of foreign philosophers.

These works by Bielefeld’s authors were printed by printers and bound by bookbinders, then all 1,505 works were delivered to the city’s 26 bookshops in order to feed the reading habits of the good folk of Bielefeld who were impatient to devote their long winter nights to their hobby: reading books.  Of course, in Bielefeld a book is only a book if it combines the work of poets, graphic artists and bookbinders with the knowledge of the booksellers. From this it should be clear that the burghers of Bielefeld consider ‘reading’ to be anything but looking at sentences and devouring words.  And so, year after year they wait for the stream of books to return before engrossing themselves and are always surprised by any novelty, by anything that didn’t exist beforehand.

In Bielefeld, this situation has led to the rise of a community of all those connected with the publishing industry: the Authors association of Bielefeld, a union of authors whose role is to protect freedom of expression in literature.  This association handles agreements with the publishers, theatres, press, institutions and other bodies that wish to publish or use the works.

This is how, in Bielefeld, 70 writers manage to make a living just by writing; the city pays commissions to a special fund that covers the books loaned by public libraries and their use as educational tools in the city’s schools.

Such is the status of Poetry and literature in Bielefeld that the local dairy organised a poetry competition for the city’s schoolchildren and then published the children’s poems on their milk cartons.  Familes in Bielefeld could therefore enrich their days by reading the poems at breakfast, such as the one below:

In the past
I was so happy
To torment him
And no-one dared reproach me

Today
I saw him,
Now he is famous,
I am jealous of him.
Who am I?
A nobody!

Welcome to the city

We should not therefore be surprised that the city’s mayor writes to those who visit it, the tourists, and explains to them that is very unlikely they are in this city, since most of humanity can be found elsewhere, a scientifically proven fact:

“Is our place of our birth an accident? Is it subject to a general rule?  Did I already exist in another form before I was born?  Did I have anything to do with where I was born? Why did Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun not have children? Surely they tried to have them?  Is it possible that no child would have wanted them as parents? I don’t know, but I don’t believe in coincidences.  I don’t believe that God rolls the dice, especially where human lives are concerned.  These thoughts inevitably lead us to consider  Schrödinger’s  cat. Here we have probably one of the world’s most famous cats (maybe a close second after Ninja cat?).  How is it that we still  don’t know its name?  So what was the name of Schrödinger’s cat?  Abracadabra? I can’t remember any more.  Let’s call it Phoenix.  It’s a common name for cats.  Phoenix was a type of cat that was alive and dead at the same time.  It has therefore always existed, and  even if Schrödinger killed his cat with undeniably bad taste, the cat is still alive in Schrödinger’s house, while Schrödinger himself died long ago:

Δx Δp ≥ h/2

Does this means that I have always existed, or perhaps I have never existed and what’s more, I don’t exist now either?  Impossible! This would mean that our entire existence was unreal and only existed in our imaginations.  So if I don’t exist, neither do you.  I find that difficult to believe.  The facts speak for themselves.  If I don’t really exist, then how can I take a plane for Finland, send myself a postcard of Tarja Halonen, the president, go back home and greet the postman as he delivers my postcard?  Who knows?“

“The father was an alcoholic and the mother always tired”

“We could compare the nation with a family, that has an alcoholic father who had been drunk for years … He had wonderful ideas, but only when he had them.  This loud mouth had no compunction in sending his family packing.  His catch phrase was ‘Stop talking bullshit!’, yet his family trusted him.  Partly because his family loved him in spite of his drunkenness and his mistakes, but also because they were quite simply afraid to stand up to him.  The family began to wonder if he were not some kind of genius rather than an alcoholic with psychological disorders, a brilliant man able to see things that your average loser was too stupid to see … In the end, he was indeed obliged to acknowledge his mental, physical and financial ruin.  He went off to rehab.  But the family were bereft, bewildered, confused and angry.”

This was the mayor’s speech during the second debate on the council’s annual budget and the citizens, who called his apparent flights of fancy ‘frighteningly accurate’, praised this speech.  Nevertheless, the mayor warned them against the rage that ‘burns’ energy and leads to exhaustion, since grief and despair breed inactivity.  “Anger is human and may be necessary, but if left to build-up, it becomes a deadly substance that poisons the mind.”  These were the mayor’s words and he had already announced in his speech on the city’s budget:

“We don’t share a set common ideology.  We are neither on the left or on the right.  We are both.  We are not even certain that this issue is important …. How many times can you cut a cake?  Who will have a small slice?  And who needs a really big slice?  What is luxury and what is important? Is it better to steel from children than from old people?  ’

The most honest politician in the country

gnarr_cover-182x300At this point, it’s worth pointing out that this is not a city we are talking about here, but a whole nation, which has no more citizens than a city like Bielefeld.  And this speech was given by a mayor who adopted the name of Jón Gnarr, and his term of office which put him in charge of the 8,000 employees of the city of Reykjavik is now over. He may no longer be in power, but that’s not to say he would not have been re-elected.  Quite the reverse.  After just one year of office, the nation gave him the title of the country’s most honourable politician.  According to a ranking of political figures in Iceland published in the daily newspaper Morgunblaðið on 11/03/2001, Jón Gnarr came first in terms of sincerity (28.8%), working with local government (23.7%), personality (29.5%), while he was at the bottom of the class for determination (5.0%), power (5.6%), the firmness of his convictions (17.9%) and the ability to work under pressure (3.5%), which made him the most honest and the most honourable person in Iceland.

This ranking irritated more than a few:  Is it not those very qualities of ‘determination’, ‘power’, firmness of his convictions’ and ‘ability to work under pressure’ that sets politicians apart and makes them who they are, whether in a dictatorship or a democracy – which in this respect is the same – and irrespective of whether the regime is secular or religious?   And does that mean that politicians are only politicians if they are sincere, work with local government and are endowed with a strong personality?

Well here are the last words from Jón Gnarr’s annual budget speech for the city.

“Miss Reykjavik has a future ahead of her. Perhaps she had an alcoholic father and a mother who was always tired.  But that won’t stop her.  She forgives everyone, and turns to face the light.  Reykjavik has the potential to the cleanest, most beautiful, most peaceful and most exciting city in the world, with a global reputation for sympathy, culture, nature and peace; it’s a diamond that we must polish if it is to shine.”

The comedian’

What is a comedian? Let us give the floor to Jón Gnarr himself:

“A year ago, I found myself on the island of Puerto Rico. I had just finished a film, which I had both written and produced with a few friends.  I found myself unemployed and wondered what my next project might be.

Until then, I had worked in an advertising agency, before being laid off following the recession and the economic downturn.  I kept up-to-date with the situation in Iceland by news sites on the internet,  I got into the habit after the collapse.  After the collapse, I was barely interested in politics and even had to make quite an effort to avoid having to follow the events in this corner of society.  This is what I did until everything collapsed in a huge crash and our Prime Minister appeared on television to ask God to bless us.  It felt as though I had been hit with a wet cloth.    What had happened? After that, I began to follow the news closely.  Wherever I went, all discussions revolved around this: in parties, business meetings and with friends I met in the street.

In an instant, I became addicted to news.  And the more I followed the news, the angrier I became.  Angry against the capitalist bankers.   Angry against the system that had failed.  But I kept my fiercest anger for the politicians.  All, without exception, were incompetent, egotistical idiots, or so I thought.

I was mad at myself and mad with the people who had elected these politicians.  I wanted to do something.  I went down to Austurvollur several times to participate in the demonstrations. But I couldn’t make up my mind to join them, heart and soul.  I didn’t want to throw faeces into Alþing, nor put up with the police.  I didn’t want to vent my rage by launching a blog.

All this anger in me and around me began to make me afraid.  I was afraid that it would grow and strengthen until something awful happened.  I felt everyone’s suffering.  I empathised with those who, as a sign of protest, remained silent while banging on pots and pans; but also with the worried politicians who hurried to their cars, or who stood in front of the cameras, with fear in the eyes.   I empathised with the policemen who stood facing the angry crowd.  At the time, my father lay dying in hospital.  He had been a policeman in Reykjavik for more than forty years.  During all those years, he had never been promoted to a higher rank, because he was a communist.  I was sad that he was dying without ever having known that the socialist-green party had taken power at Alþing.  That would have made him very happy.  I love this city and I love this country.  I love the people who live here.”

This makes one wonder whether it is fair to measure the greatness of a nation by the size of its population.

The Frankfurter Rundschau ran the headline:  “A clown moves to serious matters” and Henryk M. Broder reported live from Reykjavik: “Reykjavik is on standby for a coup d’Etat’.

Jón, the ‘clown’ handed over the town council to his successor.  The coup d’État was over. Yet, was he a clown?  Was it a coup d’État?

Translation: Jackie Dobble

deBielefeld gibt es gar nicht?

frBielefeld n´existe pas ?

On the road

Resonant bodies

Leave a comment

troll-imadeWEB-1They were back.  It was impossible to ignore them.   The cooking pot lids.

With every topic discussed, the owner of the hair salon struck a mannered pose:  “Politicians are like pigeons.” From behind he examined the expression of the culprit in the mirror and seeing that his phrase had not missed its mark, he answered the questioning, silent gaze: “When they are below you, they eat out of your hand, when they are above you, they shit on you.”

Demo_12-150x150Clearly, this man knows his pigeons.  In front of Alþing, the Icelandic Parliament, you could hear people banging pot lids, spatulas, or anything you might carry in your pocket were your path to lead to the Parliament building. People we beating and hitting any surface capable of making sure that the people’s voice penetrated through the closed windows.  Indeed, what’s the point of standing outside in the wind and rain for hours on end, if you can’t get your message through closed windows and make it so loud that any normal conversation becomes impossible, except by shouting at each other?

The idea that we can draw lessons from the past and that the parliament, which was accessible without the slightest security measure until 2008, needed to be protected against its people, proved to be a very stupid.  That year, the people stormed the Parliament, a sort of “Defenestration of Prague” but without any defenestration, and Halldór Guðmundsson reported in his book We are all Icelanders that parliamentarians only owe their lives to the lack of an available tree on which to lynch them, since the last tree had been been burned.

To understand the Icelanders better, it’s clear that such a thing would never have happened, even if parliament had been surrounded by an entire forest.  No angry individual would have dreamed of it.  The Icelanders enjoy humour when it falls under the category of the ‘smart Icelander’.  The act of burning the only tree in front of the Parliament, the gigantic fir tree, that Norway sends to the Icelanders each year by boat in time for Advent, must therefore be fall under the category of ‘smart Icelander’. That year then, this majestic fir tree had gone up in flames.  Icelanders don’t like inflating the truth.  Kiss goodbye to peace, joy and cupcakes.  In the end it is a matter of pure survival.

These events clearly left a deep mark on the ladies and gentlemen of the parliament and the building has now adopted the continental fashion of a ‘security perimeter’.  A kind of ‘iron curtain’ between the people and its representatives, more than a thousand years after the island was first settled.

Not that the people have become more violent over the centuries.  In any way. Quite the reverse even.  But it is easier to set up a security perimeter than rack your brains trying to understand how we could have got to the point of being forced to protect the people’s representatives against the ideology that they are supposed to represent, but in reality don’t, and who as a result, either through fear or ignorance, only differ from Louis 16th by the non-heredity nature of their office.

Demo_3-150x150The security perimeter proved to be a stupid idea, because it used metal barriers.   An invitation appreciated by all those who were forced to stand in front of the door.  And this is how more than a hundred boots were battered against the barriers, not discordantly, but rhythmically, generating a pulsating beat that could be heard as far away at the church of Hallgrimur. The beating rhythm echoed through the rows of houses like invisible drums calling the warriors to the battlefield; the parliament, like a circle of wagons, was under siege and there was no John Wayne in sight to free the gentlefolk from the clutches of savages.

A few of these stoic messengers showed their ‘smart Icelandic’ spirit: they turned their back on the parliament and faced the people, without forgetting to hit back, like an Icelandic horse that punishes an inexperienced groom for getting too close.

We would therefore be within rights to enquire what provoked this confrontation.

It was the EU entry negotiations. But we would be mistaken in believing that this angry crowd was for or against Iceland joining the EU.  It was purely and simply about respecting a campaign promise.

During the election campaign, the winning party had promised to put the question of whether to continue the EU membership negotiations to the vote and let the people decide.  Scarcely after taking office, the government stopped negotiations with the EU, because statistics showed that in any case, most Icelanders would vote against joining.  Despite the logic of the Government’s decision, the gulf separating it from the view of the people was immense: it wasn’t a question of knowing whether most Icelanders wanted to join the EU or not, it was about knowing that if a politician makes a campaign promise, however absurd, we must accept that he will break it. And this is what makes a people great: a word is like a signed agreement.  If contractual fulfilment is stupid, that’s the problem of the person who was unable to remain silent.  If he had said nothing, he would have stayed wise and got off scot free.  That may not seem very pragmatic, but it all depends on how you define pragmatism.  For Icelanders, making an electoral promise and then breaking it is not pragmatic.  A pragmatic approach involves either coming good on a campaign promise, or promising nothing.  And to ensure the message is heard loud and clear, there are always pan lids and spatulas in the kitchen.

Well, the parliamentarians heard the message and quickly learned the lesson.  The following day, the metal barriers had disappeared, replaced by a plastic noise reduction plastic strip.

It was completely useless.  Since in front of the Parliament, there are enough metallic objects that can be used as resonant bodies: lamp posts, street signs, parking posts, etc. Spatulas and pan lids therefore went on with their daily grind, since nature has taught each Icelander from their formative years that water drops falling one after the other will dissolve even the hardest of basalts.

Since it seems that the Parliamentarians didn’t dare leave the building. because the people were in front of the door, those who were standing in front of the door fulfilled their duty of assistance and brought sustenance to the representatives of the people.  They couldn’t after all be accused of giving their MPs hunger pains.   Only scandalmongers would say that bananas were a reference to the fact that by abandoning an electoral promise, the Parliamentarians had lowered the Republic to the level of a banana republic.

That being said, the process of cooling one’s heels in front of the Parliament building for hours, day after day, cannot necessarily be transposed to other countries.  That could lead to the collapse of the nation.  Because you would need to drum for 365 days.  Each year.  In front of parliaments, at the town, county, regional and national level.  Breaking electoral promises is therefore a well established problem in these countries.  What was the point of me chattering yesterday?  We take offence and fall into the same trap the next time. He who believes that apples never fall far from the tree is indeed a fool.

In a democracy, the servant chooses his master, and the fish decides on the head.  There is therefore not much point in poking fun at the master or the head.  Better consider the fish or the servant rather than the head of the master.  Those who want to become good citizens understand they must conform in time.

EU-gurk-Flagge-B2-150x150We therefore create structures in which the fundamental right of a cucumber to have a specific radius prevails over the right of every person to sell tasty cucumbers.  And soon we’ll have the idea that one thing cannot be bad in Europe if it is found to be good elsewhere.  In the event of an offence, the State is reminded of its duty: the explosive conclusions of a firm of lawyers has already been drafted and waiting in the drawers to be handed out the the MPs.  In the form in orders, with 9 digits before the decimal point.  People here, people there.  And now, it is no longer the noise of pan lids which affects the MPs to the bottom of their souls.  The magical phrase is therefore:  ‘Hello, this is Boston Legal! My client has a pebble in his shoe.  Do you want a lawsuit for damages? ’

Demo_9-150x150Isn’t there a pan lid just under the sink? Could it be that we have noticed rather too late that the human right ‘All humans are created equal’ is also used for purposes for which it was definitely not intended?  For example, people who hide behind the expression ‘free market’, are really interested in their bank balance and not their ‘rights’ at all.  Other than the right to infinitely increase their balance?  Indian rice farmers driven to bankruptcy in their villages fell into debt for something that until recently was a negligible cost: seeds.   And in a democracy, is it not the fish that chooses the head rather than the head that chooses the fish? Security perimeters here and there?

Let’s cook the fish! Here’s the lid … And now who wants some butter for the fish?

Translation: Jackie Dobble

deResonanzkörper

Corps de frrésonance

 

Snjall

The information society based on science

2 Comments

troll-imadeWEB-1Tilvera: In a democracy, no-one is powerless. Man’s power can be broken by a man, by a revolt of moral conscience and by civil society.

Ónytjungur: He who prefers to say nothing often resorts to hollow concepts; and since the hallmark of societies is the love of chatter …

Tilvera: I didn’t use a hollow concept.

Ónytjungur: Interesting. And what should I think when I hear the words democracy, moral conscience and civil society?

Tilvera: Democracy  is the sovereignty of the people, civil society is an information society based on science, and moral conscience is considered to be a particular characteristic of human conscience that determines how we should judge.

Ónytjungur: And do you think you improve your statement by adding other hollow concepts? Isn’t moral conscience the feeling of calm or agitation that enters the conscience when a planned, completed or forgotten act is in agreement or contradiction with a moral principle that an individual considers as vital?

Tilvera: I still haven’t used a hollow concept.

Ónytjungur: Interesting. And what should I think when I hear the words  information society based on science and human conscience?

Tilvera: Western society, of course.

Ónytjungur: Have you noticed that you are going round in circles?

Tilvera: Because I use synonyms?

Ónytjungur: Not at all; because you confuse assertion with reality.

Tilvera: So what would you call reality?

Ónytjungur: Well an example of reality would be like Albert Einstein said: science without religion is lame, while religion without science is blind.

Tilvera: And what would your assertion be?

Ónytjungur: That Western civil society is an information society based on science.

Tilvera: Do you want to make me believe that your intelligence is not yet sufficiently developed to establish a relation between a scientist’s statement and the statements of an information society based on science?

Ónytjungur: Quite.  Because it is indeed this information society based on science which today, just like in the past, not only produced, owned and used nuclear bombs against the will of this scientist, but into the bargain, considers it perfectly normal and legal that a handful of charlatans can destroy society and along with it, everyone on earth when they see fit, on a scale and in proportions that would make the atrocities of the barbarians in the Middle Ages seem like the pathetic attempts of novices.   If my memory serves me well, this attribute of humanity is called evolutionary humanism.

Tilvera: This is not an evil, since as I said at the beginning; no one is powerless in a democracy, because man’s power can be broken by man, by the revolt of moral conscience and by civil society.

Ónytjungur: Isn’t it true that when man evokes a possibility that theoretically exists, he has degenerated to the state of an ideologist?

Tilvera: Do you dispute the fact the man’s power can be broken by man?

Ónytjungur: What do you believe by that?  But you have to know how to be an idealist to declare that the revolt of moral conscience has never been a trigger for civil society.

Tilvera: So how would you define an idealist then?

Ónytjungur: To remain neutral, I would say it’s an idiot, who takes what is presented to him through an arrow slit as an important world concept.

Tilvera:You are forgetting the existence of the intellect.

Ónytjungur: Not at all.  The intellect and collective feeling are two separate concepts. What they share is that one must be absent for the other to exist.

Tilvera: Democracies are only made possible by the interaction between collective feeling and intellect.

HalbierterBaum-225x300Ónytjungur: Well, that would explain why after two thousand years, western civilisation has yet to experience true democracy.

Tilvera: So in your view, what has it experienced?

Ónytjungur: If I go back to a scientist, in this case, Aristotle, who introduced the concept of democracy, then democracy refers to the power of those who are guided by arete, i.e., courage, generosity, munificence, justice and wisdom. No doubt you are also aware that courage, generosity, munificence, justice and wisdom are never limited by the boundaries of countries or lands, and you will not make me believe that among the systems that you call democracies, there is just one example based on the different criteria identified by Aristotle and which operates according to these criteria.

Tilvera: No, probably not, but what other systems could there be?

Ónytjungur: Here we find the same principle as for Einstein’s phrase and that of the so called information society and based on the knowledge which has been drawn from it.  Here the result is that these systems really like to present themselves as democracies so that we fail to notice that they are pure dictatorships.  The difference between these systems and those that we consider as dictatorships can only be found in the number of dictators involved.

Perhaps here it is a specific form of an anthropological constant that occurs in information societies based on science, and therefore the result is that an intelligent person likes to replace words that have negative connotations with positive words, just as they like to use positive concepts to hide the constant meanness of reality.  While the first is totally inoffensive, since when hearing the words recycling centre, no one would imagine anything other than a dump; however, the other direction is dangerous, because it inevitably involves forgetting what the word democracy truly means.

Tilvera: All you need therefore is to talk of a democratic dictatorship, to make it impossible to know what a democracy is.

Ónytjungur: In the dictator’s mind, dictatorship is always people power.

Tilvera: You are forgetting collective feeling.

Ónytjungur: Are you talking about that stance created to condition people to support an individual?  Doesn’t that lead to creating a kind of social group that strengthens tribal behaviour, but makes fools of scientists?

Tilvera: There are more serious things.

Ónytjungur: Why does this argument remind me of the boy who said he was working on healing the world, because he had been content to rip off his classmate, while another boy had also beaten him up?

Translation: Jackie Dobble

deDie wissenschaftsbasierte Informationsgesellschaft

frLa société de l´information basée sur la science

Tala hátt og snjállt