I Don't Fear Death
I had 2 hours to wait one afternoon a few years ago. So I picked two books that I recently found on a table in our local public library. They cleaned up and gave books away.
One book was from Konstantin Wecker, a famous German songwriter and singer. The book was the printed out speech he gave some years ago before a large group of neurologists. He has been a heavy drug addict for years (on cocaine), was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years.
The title of the book is “Es gibt kein Leben ohne Tod” – “There is no life without death” subtitle, “thinking about happiness, dependency and an alternate drugpolicy.”
Right after the speech he adds some thoughts, which made me think hard ever since. Not that I haven’t observed it, but I have never read such a brutally honest and concise observation about me and the “generation i-phone”.
Here is a translation:
“We live in a society where distraction seems to be the most holy goal. All offers for our leisure time reflect the costly attempt to hinder each free second, where we could meet ourselves in silence/quietness. Flooded by pictures that have already been chewed for us, we hardly have a chance to develop our own ideas about sorrow and joy. We get a show, how to cry, when to laugh, why to be happy.
In the meantime we have long since forgotten that all these intrusive happy people from the advertising billboards only try to cover up our despair - our despair about the impossibility to buy happiness. And as little as we like to admit it, just as much we suspect it already: happiness is not to be found in time – for time never means presence for us, but almost exclusively a being glued to the past or to the future with our thoughts – and therefore not in a material level.
But the more we are distracted from searching for the meaning of life, the more this human fundamental right is stolen from us, the more our capacity/ability withers to detect the basics/essentials in us. The escape into the other dimension of drugs is ultimately without doubt a distraction from the real being that needs to be discovered behind all the craving, the lies and the Vanity Fair, by which we meander/wriggle through life.”
One book was from Konstantin Wecker, a famous German songwriter and singer. The book was the printed out speech he gave some years ago before a large group of neurologists. He has been a heavy drug addict for years (on cocaine), was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years.
The title of the book is “Es gibt kein Leben ohne Tod” – “There is no life without death” subtitle, “thinking about happiness, dependency and an alternate drugpolicy.”
Right after the speech he adds some thoughts, which made me think hard ever since. Not that I haven’t observed it, but I have never read such a brutally honest and concise observation about me and the “generation i-phone”.
Here is a translation:
“We live in a society where distraction seems to be the most holy goal. All offers for our leisure time reflect the costly attempt to hinder each free second, where we could meet ourselves in silence/quietness. Flooded by pictures that have already been chewed for us, we hardly have a chance to develop our own ideas about sorrow and joy. We get a show, how to cry, when to laugh, why to be happy.
In the meantime we have long since forgotten that all these intrusive happy people from the advertising billboards only try to cover up our despair - our despair about the impossibility to buy happiness. And as little as we like to admit it, just as much we suspect it already: happiness is not to be found in time – for time never means presence for us, but almost exclusively a being glued to the past or to the future with our thoughts – and therefore not in a material level.
But the more we are distracted from searching for the meaning of life, the more this human fundamental right is stolen from us, the more our capacity/ability withers to detect the basics/essentials in us. The escape into the other dimension of drugs is ultimately without doubt a distraction from the real being that needs to be discovered behind all the craving, the lies and the Vanity Fair, by which we meander/wriggle through life.”
56-60, M