The Uncontrollability of the World | Sociologist Hartmut Rosa | Lecture

[Music] try to remember the last time you were really touched by something and let's take something positive i think we can all use that do you have something in mind and don't worry you don't have to tell me now try to think of what made this occasion what made this moment special Was it something that you expected to happen in the first place probably not was it something you were consciously striving to achieve probably not in fact claims hartmut rosa we can only be touched by the uncontrollable and yet at the same time in our

daily lives we notice that all we are trying To do is to control things we strive for control we want to know things we want to be able to grasp things but how this happens and what the consequences of it are you will soon hear from our guest sociologist hartmut rosa and we're very happy that he can be here with us tonight hartmut rosa is professor of sociology at the friedrichshield university University in yena and he's also the director of the max weber center for advanced social and cultural studies in effort you may know him

already from his books social acceleration and resonance and he was already here too in 2017 for a lecture and last year no that's not true i thought it was last year but longer ago anyway his long-awaited follow-up was published the uncontrollability of the world Thanks for joining us either here in theater looks in nijmegen or at home through live stream my name is lisbeth johnson i am a program writer for hotpot reflect and i will be your host tonight the outline of tonight's program is pretty straightforward you will soon listen to a 40 minutes lecture

by hartmut rosa and after that he will discuss the topic in more detail with theologian and ethicist crystal fibental of course there will be time for your Own questions as well and for you here it looks you can simply raise your hands and one of my colleagues will come with the microphone just as in good old times and for those of you joining my live stream you will see a a code in your screens and if you go to the website mentee.com you can enter the code there and i will get them on my tablet

what else um Yeah i think you've listened to me long enough before before we come to listen to professor rosa we have selected a short a short film from the nijmegen international short film festival that will take place again in april this year and they have especially for us selected a short film on control so we'll listen and listen we will look at that First uh but i would like to have a warm applause for hartmut rosa already [Applause] all right looks like a slightly brutal ending but quite interesting film right about the soundtrack of

our lives maybe even uh so uh thank you very much elizabeth uh for for the kind introduction and to read about reflects for the invitation i'm very happy to first of all have a Chance to talk to real people and not just to screens right and uh and also to be back in niamh and as you said i was here a few years ago i have very good memories on also on the discussions which i like very much i always claim that i want to do a sociology a form of sociology which is not which

does not contain the idea that i bring my wisdom to the people right because i mean if you think your wisdom or your your Insights are created in the ivory tower then probably the insights are not much not very valuable right i i believe my idea is of how we should do social sciences social philosophy is right having a chance of interpreting the situation we are in right making a suggestion as how we could understand our predicament right our social situation and also our problems but then you have to discuss it with audiences of all

sorts of all ages and of all Countries and of all cultures and of all disciplines and then you gradually might reformulate your theories and your ideas and i think we have to i hope and and i want to do it together with people i mean that's that's really what i want to do i i come up with an idea like resonance and then i present it to all forms of people and then i realize oh i forgot this aspect and and i have that problem and the other problem so i Think it's a collaborative effort

and you never reach any end right so it goes on and on so you so it's beyond our control right and this is this is uh this is the topic of what i want to present to you and then also discuss with a christopher benthal and elizabeth first and with all of you as i can write the uncontrollability of the world i believe that basically what i want to tell you is that Modernity is all about trying to i think i have to stand here for the live stream right otherwise i create a problem normally

i always walk up and down all right so um so we try to to bring the world under control elizabeth has already um hinted at that but in fact it doesn't quite work that way in fact i would even say it doesn't work for two reasons one reason is that our attempt at gaining complete control over The world has led to the opposite the world is becoming and life is getting more and more uncontrollable but uncontrollability of a bad sort i would call it so so so that's that's a problem right and the other is

that really when you think of what is a good life i really believe a good life is to be in a kind of constant relationship in a relationship of listening and answering that's my basic idea that's what i call Resonance right being in resonance and you're only in resonance with something that is not completely under control right for example you can be in resonance with a person but only as long as you do not have complete command or control over him or her if you're a boss or a general and your soldier or whatever it

is or your slave has to do exactly what you want then you're not in resonance with him or her right and and and even if you If you whatever it is if you had complete control of something you might have an instrumental relationship to it but it's not resonance so so the middle voice what i mean with the middle voice i will tell you when we get there right basically i want to move in the following steps the first is that i that i want to develop this claim i think i need to get my

glasses first of all to see you but also to see the screen here so uh so the first step Is my i want to develop the idea that our our our desire for control or our urge for control is not just a cultural disposition a yearning or a feature of our us of our culture it's a structural necessity right and it leads to a state of aggression towards the world which has a lot of problematic aspects which i tried to write about in my book on acceleration and then the second step as i already tried

to suggest is uh that I want to uh to to convince you uh of the fact that we that our attempt to control the world has paradoxical results basically the idea is we lose the world and we lose life right and if we even destroy it right by our attempts to gain complete control and then the question is how could it be different you know my my resonance book which is the big book right it ends with an optimistic note saying that a different way a different world Is possible a different form of living is

possible and the question is what could this form of life be and i claim it's it's a form of life which is at least to some degree led in the middle voice and the middle voice is a voice between the active and the passive and as i said we will come there uh in due time but i want to start by giving you a kind Of structural definition of our i said oh i have to stand here i said i said um and i want to kind of interpret the the situation we are in as

human beings in the 21st century right it's it's bad enough right now as as you all know um so the question is how did we get here and how can we characterize our society or a modern society and as you know there's a lot of in in in nightmare and as elsewhere a lot of Discussion of what modernity is about and it's a very problematic term some of my colleagues in sociology suggest that we should give up the term modernity altogether because it's value-laden and it's ethnocentric and there are many different modernities the indian modernity

is different from the japanese or the chinese and so on but i claim i can give you a structural definition and then you can see it there on the screen a society can be called modern when its Mode of stabilization is dynamic which means when it systematically requires material growth technological acceleration and cultural innovation to reproduce its structure and to maintain an institutional status quo that might sound technical and difficult but it's very easy you see it most easily in economic terms right i'm pretty sure it's the same in in in the netherlands as it

is in germany or elsewhere in europe or in in even in in Russia in china and in the u.s um politicians and economists and so on they claim that we need to achieve economic growth and the interesting thing is that we do not need growth and by the way we achieve growth through acceleration and if we don't ex if we don't grow if an economy like in japan for many years if an economy doesn't grow you need acceleration nevertheless you even need more acceleration which means you need To be the first and the fastest and

so on in order to keep the number of jobs etc so what i want to say is our economy if we start with that can only maintain its structure what do i mean with structure the number of jobs the number of companies and the strength of companies and so on and the whole economic fabric and actually but with the economic fabric comes the old age pension schemes and the health care systems and the in in the cultural Institutions like a university and so on we can only maintain it if we grow year by year by

year right germany now has a new government somehow supposed to be to the left of the older government and all three parties insist that we need to keep keep the growth engines fired and going right we want to grow out of the crisis they say right but the interesting question is do we want to grow do we need growth in order to change to get somewhere I claim this would be a kind of natural state of affairs to run fast in order to achieve a goal a finishing line right that's a normal human way of

behaving and also if you if you're hungry if you if we don't have enough bread here we somehow need to grow and produce more bread in order to feed our hunger and if you don't have enough clothes and you feel cold in the winter you need growth in order to have enough clothing but the problem is that Those who can pay already have enough of everything right we eat too much i mean it's really it's a perverse state of affairs and i i really i want to hammer it to audiences all over the world because

it seems to me so obvious i mean think of you know our three govern parties in the in the in the german government they claim we want growth right so i actually asked them so in which sector exactly do you want to grow do you want to produce more cars Now we have greens right they would say oh no no no not more cars okay not cars so let's produce more planes i mean the the the air industries have been growing immensely exploding almost before corona of course the greens would say oh no no no

no not not not in the in the in the in the airplane system so okay let's let's not talk about transport so do you want to so what do you want to produce more houses i mean you know the building economy is Very important so they try to build more houses all the companies working in the in the construction sector want to achieve growth they need to achieve growth next year build more houses than this year but actually that's not such a good idea i'm not exactly sure about holland or the netherlands i think you

have the same problem as we have everywhere in middle europe there's already not enough green spaces right so so to permanently grow in the housing Sector it's not very good so the government so those parties will say oh no no not in that sector so i say okay not there so where do you want to grow right in in clothing do we have to change them even faster we throw them away all all of the clothes you wear you probably throw away before they are worn out right because they are out of fashion or so

on and most of the clothing is produced in bangladesh or elsewhere anyway so that's Not a good idea so do you want to produce more more computers or more smartphones not such a good idea either more weapons this is the new hit right we will produce more weapons okay but but we could produce more food for example actually every sector in the economy wants to grow and needs growth in order to maintain what they have right so so we can produce more food but those who can afford to buy it are Already actually we are

we are obese we eat too much do you know how they achieve growth they achieve it by it by introducing by um inserting certain certain substances like enzymes i have no ants and some have no idea what that is in english and sumi you understand that right certain substances into the food in order to in you know for what in order to somehow stop the signal which is sent from the stomach to the brain normally when you eat and you have Enough there's a signal from the stomach to the brain which says you're full stop

it now they have found ways to somehow stop that signal so you keep eating even though you already have enough right so i mean that's that's where we are as a society you you need to achieve growth next year i don't know how much the gross domestic product of the netherlands is but no matter how big it is next year you have to build more buy More construct more fly more use more computers and so on you have to exchange them faster and faster just to maintain the system and i insist that this is a

perverse state of affairs it has never been like that in any culture or society we know of in human history but i'm not saying that it's perverse to grow or to accelerate generally it's good if you need if you want to change But that you have to get to innovate all the time and to you know i mean it's the three things you see there innovate grow and accelerate just to stay where you are that's perverse i'm sorry and you know i mean and it's very interesting when modernity this is my definition of modernity this

logic i call it dynamic stabilization maintain what you have by increasing right it comes to us through the logic Of optimization everything has to be optimized improved somehow it has to be made faster more efficient and so on um i forgot what i wanted to say okay i mean this is the this is the logic of of of of modern society and i claim that this is um this is a deeply uh problematic oh no i know what i wanted to say here it started in the 18th century and you know at that time i

Really believe in what this i call it modernity the structural heart of modernity but of course it had a kind of cultural promise right and of course it's very obvious what this promise is the idea was that this acceleration growth innovation was moving forward it's connected to our conception of progress i mean it's so obvious right yes we can produce more food and more houses and that means we can overcome hunger hunger and scarcity And cold and so on and also through the progress of science we will overcome ignorance and even through acceleration we will

overcome time scarcity so actually so you know you could see you know social research sometimes is very useful and they could actually tell you that even in bad times or at least apart from the very worst times right parents would all over the western world or the modern world say we work as hard as we can in order For our kids to have a better life and this was kind of propelling us forward right our kids will have a better life and what kind of better life is that it's a life which is in in

which you don't have to struggle for your existence all the time right so accelerating growing innovating was moving forward and now the problem is we already as i said we already have enough houses and cars and clothes and computers and food and even drugs right But we still have to grow not in order to move forward but to stay where we are and while we run faster and faster each year next year you have to run faster no matter how fast you already are you're not moving towards the new the new horizon right you're running

away from the abyss which coming from behind which is unemployment which is economic downfall which is global disaster climate change and so on so now the abyss is coming from behind and you run Faster and faster just to keep your place that's a problematic situation that's my take of where the situation we are in nevertheless my second claim is that we are not just the victims of this logic of acceleration innovation growth of dynamic stabilization there's also an element of aspiration which is driving us a cultural promise actually i claim a conception of the good

life right and this And this conception of the good life i call that i think i've put it somewhere down here the triple a horizon of the good life my claim is probably all of us i simply claim it and if you think i'm wrong you just tell me afterwards you say that's completely wrong right but but i really i i ask myself and others when do you what do you use the word good for good something is good right so if in Conversation you say oh that's really good i'm pretty sure i i believe

i can i can show that most of the time good means expanding something that expands the horizon of what is available attainable or accessible or controllable control controllability is my blanket term for this basically right so for example if i tell you oh you know what my salary has increased i earn more Money probably a lot of people will say oh that's really good so why is it good right because because money your bank account tells you what your share your possible share of the world is right if you have a lot of money on

your bank account then you can afford flying to rio or chicago or tokyo or whatever it is i mean apart from corona and war and so on right let's just go back to the world before 2020. So the bank account told you literally how much of the world was within your reach right if you have a lot of money on saved or you're in a bank account then going for a shopping trip to new york is within reach or going on holidays to the mala divas is within reach and if you're extremely rich like bezos

and musk and all these other idiots sorry to say then you know you expand the horizon of what is available to you to outer space That's what they actually do right they really want to bring within the within the they want to convince yourself now we can even go to outer space that's good apparently that's good for them other otherwise they wouldn't do it right but it's not just in physical in in in geographical or territorial um um scales that increasing the horizon of availability is good it's in all forms Right for example i mean

why do most people want to live in big cities rather than small cities if you ask youngsters i mean maybe small cities are okay a city like nijmegen certainly has its charm right yena is even smaller but also nice but people young people certainly don't want to live in the village why not i come from a village and all our youngsters run away and why or they will tell you oh when i go to amsterdam for Example right there are all the museums there's the opera the theaters the i don't know what else the cinemas

and so on they might never go to the opera or the theater or the museum or the zoo but it's available it's attainable on an everyday reach right or why is why is the smartphone so irresistible right all the time we are it's not just the young right also the earlier all the time i mean it's amazing if you were aliens watching us you think would Really think it's a new disease right so why is this so attractive it's obvious because you know i have now all the world available in my pocket all the music

that was ever recorded is just two clicks away and all the knowledge which is in wikipedia so just two clicks away and all my friends and even my enemies unfortunately are just two clicks away right so we have made the world available attainable accessible so my claim here is it's our Conception of the good and of the good life life is good when the horizon of what you can attain access make available is increasing right so and and this kind of runs together in in a logic of controllability we want to bring the world within

reach make it controllable i want you know in in in like i want to have an internet connection why because then i can bring the world home right and i want to have The chance to go to other places right i mean for example there's a cruise you can you can book a cruise i have to hurry up it's my first slide okay you can book a you can book a cruise which gives you a polar light guarantee right so if you if you if you book this cruise you are you have you're guaranteed you

will see the polar lights if you don't see the polar lights in the north and atlantic or so right then you will get your money back Right so you even kind of want to bring this under control i want to have a guarantee i've paid for it and so on so so so far you see so so what what this runs up to i claim is that what we do is we want to make on the one hand we are structurally forced because of the logic of dynamic stabilization and on the other hand we are

culturally driven towards a program that brings the world under control scientifically Economically politically and so on and when i talk about controllability i believe what what you see here right is this logic of making things visible for example with telescope looking towards the outer universe with microscopes making visible what is in the microworld right but then also accessible we want to get there with the satellites and with the rockets and with the airplanes and so on but also with the endoscopes into our bodies And so so controllability for means me for me means making things

visible then making things accessible we want to get there we want to have a handle on it then making things controllable we want to control the world look how we control for example the room here the space right we can with it with a click if you have the remote control right you can make it bright light or dark night you can make it very hot or you can make it Very cold you can make play loud music or you can make it completely silent so we have control over the world and over our atmosphere

so we're driven towards that forced on the one hand culturally driven on the second hand now this leads to a to a to a state of what i call aggression towards the world we are forced into a form of whatever you see whatever you hear whatever there is we have to bring it under control right the world as it appears you know when You wake up in the morning the world is there as a kind of a field of points of attack right for example it's very interesting how do you wake up in the morning

not because the sun comes up for example right not because you slept enough but because your alarm clock is alarming you right i mean it's interesting that we call it alarm clock so you jump out of bed i have to get ready right in order to fetch the bus or whatever it is that you have to do right So and then you and then you encounter your to-do list and the to-do list is your points of attack right i have to write that message i have to call that person i have to read that essay

or whatever it is so it's a number of things which you have to to bring under control right to to to get done so the world or reality is experienced as a field of resistance also I think i'll leave it at this i mean if whoever wants to have it can can get the slides we put it on the desktop there right but the claim is the modernity is a form of relating to the world which is on the one hand declaring spiritual independence which means it should not be nature who tells us what to

do it should not be history who tells us what to do it's us who decide we bring nature and history and whatever there is under our control and then we decide so it's The lot the paradigm of sovereignty and autonomy are the kind of the cultural equivalence to this have i done something wrong oh i have done something wrong okay no okay now my now now the interesting now i come to the flip side right and my claim is that this program of making the world available attainable accessible Controllable doesn't quite deliver its promise in

fact it leads to the opposite and i find this really interesting it's kind of the one of the last good i believe it's a good idea right i had that i really think our way of being in the world is permanently kind of flipping back and forth between on the one hand a promise of omnipotence you can do everything and on the other hand the experience of powerlessness i can do nothing right and What do i mean here you know i think the paradigm case when i came up with this idea was when i was

reading a kind of a piece by oppenheimer who who men who who managed to split the atom right nuclear fissure right so so to speak splitting the atom he said it makes us somehow almost godlike and i completely understand it i share this idea with him he says now we are at the inside of matter we can control Matter from the inside the atom right this is a kind of experience of almost omnipotence right now we are inside the heart of matter but but the problem was that this gave us an experience of extreme powerlessness

with a nuclear explosion be it a power plant or be it a bomb right so my claim is that on the one hand this feeling of active omnipotence created the the counter sense of extreme powerlessness and it's the same basically on On another scale with our relationship towards nature we have come to really control and dominate nature on so many levels of our lives as i just said we decide whether it's bright light or dark night or hot or cold so we don't we are dominating nature but the problem is thereby we feel completely powerless

in the in phase of the climate disaster which is coming which is a around the door right so our experience of omnipotence is somehow turning around And we feel totally powerless in face of the heat and the dearth and the tsunami and the and the water rising and so on right so again there there's a kind of omnipotence we control nature and then there is this kind of the opposite feeling totally powerless and i believe the problem of democracy we have in our societies right is is directly related to this because you know you know

this logic of control has a Political side right it's the promise of popular sovereignty right at the heart of democracy and i think it's good i don't want to criticize that is the idea that all the power rests with the people it rests with us right popular sovereignty says all the all the power rests with the people omnipotence but the experience of people in our society is that they can't do anything right theoretically we can democratically control and steer the world but Practically practically unfortunately there are the military powers and the financial markets and and

the logic of whatever we can't do anything and i believe right-wing populism is a kind of reaction to this because the right-wing populist leaders kind of you know like in brexit you know what the brexit slogan was take back control right live up to the promise of having control over your life but i believe in the political realm there's also this kind of going Back and forth on the one hand we are promised omnipotence on the on the other hand people experience extreme political powerlessness but the most another very interesting case you know there you

can really feel it in your own body i mean there's an intro a number of interesting empirical research on this with a remote control in your smart home or in your car you're kind of omnipotent i've said it now already two times okay All good things are three times so once again i'm omnipotent i can make it hot or cold or bright light dark night loud and soft and so on until the remote control fails or something in technologically is wrong and then i cannot turn off the music anymore right i cannot turn down the

heat or for example i got locked in my car once right because of all the safety i want to have everything under control unfortunately you could not go out and You know i i could not go out right sometimes you can't get in and sometimes you can't get out and what is very interesting is that the experience of powerlessness there is so brutal you know i mean the world has always been resistant but normally when a door locks or so you somehow try to use more force or you might even take a hammer or so

right or some some tools but in this modern world you know the problem is the handle goes down very Easily there's absolutely no resistance but the door would still not move and there is nothing i can do absolutely nothing i mean it's the same with the computer right if the remote you know as i said i'm omnipotent right all my friends two clicks away all the music two clicks away until this thing for some reason is kind of breaking down and then it says just a moment please just a moment please for hours right and

there's absolutely nothing i can do and This feeling of powerlessness is very interesting i believe it produces our the anger which is in the world there's a lot of anger and this anger is coming from this very very delicate delicate fragile way of relating to the world my own my physical powers my grip my tool what i can do with my body is kind of completely it is without any efficacy in this world right so i'm so uh so i leave this i leave this i mean of Course i mean you know my book on

uncontrollability ends with something of course it was kind of you can say good luck because it ends with a the last chapter in that book is uh it's not yet in dutch but it will come out in i think in september or so and the last chapter says the return of uncontrollability in the form of a monster right and of course those are the monsters on the right hand but i mean we see a lot of Monsters in recent times i find this really fascinating in in the you know if you think of pre-2016 people

in the in holland or in the netherlands or germany somehow felt that they are kind of living in a predictable world in a controllable world right controllable and predictable is very close and then now and then we had to suffer quite a number of shocks right i mean one shock was that Something like trump was possible right all of a sudden our political world seemed to be very shaky right and then the brits decided to leave the eu and no one would have thought of this that the eu was not becoming more and more solid

unified and bigger but somehow breaking apart right and then of course uh covet came along right and you could not even you know the the horizon of availability and accessibility and attainability overnight it was within a few days it Shrank to your home when you were in lockdown right what is available and attainable and accessible to you are just a few yards around your house and that's it so this is really a shock to a world which tries to control and expand the horizon of everything and now even war is coming back and by the

way also the financial markets in 2008 right they proved to be monsters of uncontrollability no one can control the financial markets anymore so so my claim Is right that the our program of controlling the world is failing because it produces monstrous forms of non-controllability people don't have control over their lives you even see it on an everyday level right i mean when kids get their high school diploma right the grown-ups would tell them oh now you are really lucky and happy the world is open to you right the world is within your reach and in

fact if you talk to high school kids they're Tot mortally afraid because for example in germany they have 19 549 different courses of study to select from and now you know and all the the the clever coaches tell them oh you have to carefully decide what you want and what you need and what you can do and then you have to find the right program and to match it and then you have a good life it's totally impossible to do this right no one knows exactly what his or Her needs and desires and capabilities are

and it's impossible to find the right course out of nineteen thousand nine hundred so i really always try to tell my students the freshmen in particular probably they are no longer called freshman the first year students right um that it's not about the perfect match it's about appropriation which accepts a lot of uncontrollability being in it in in the middle voice and this is what i will finish with i have 10 more minutes i believe right okay i mean what is this this is the idea of the middle voice i will i will abbreviate it

you know what i wanted to say with the omnipotence and the powerlessness is i believe connected to the to our language even european languages right we only know the active mode i am in control so to speak right or the passive mode i am controlled or i Throw something or i am thrown to use a philosophical concept right it's active or passive i'm the subject of something happening or the object of it but the most interesting things the experiences which you value most are when you cannot tell whether you are active or passive because you

are in between and to abbreviate it my favorite example here we discussed it over lunch or dinner over dinner right it's for Example in a dance you know this famous yates quote who can tell the dancer who dared who can tell the dancer from the dance and i interpreted it this way you know normally when you dance for example you're a couple dancing then one is given the lead and the other is kind of following right and then it might turn around and the first person is giving the or the second person is given the

lead and the first person is kind of Reacting to it but at the moment when the dance is at its at its climax at the height you cannot tell whether you're leading or whether you are led right it's in between and that's what yates in his in his poem means right the dance is kind of dancing the dancers it's even producing the dancers and a lot of people making music know this experience and by the way also people doing sports like in a soccer game when you no longer Can tell whether you're reacting to a

movement or where you are initiating it right those are moments of of media passivity right a medio passive is a is a language to a linguistic term which means a mode which is in between the active and the passive and we have it if we can some sometimes like it it snows right we say right it snows my book starts with snowfall right it snows is a kind of medio passive thing because you don't know who is Snowing and who is snowed too now you cannot tell it right its nose is a kind of medio

passive and in the bible or so you have it when or in in old um in old uh fairy tales there you often find the sentence and it just so happened it happened right so there is not a doer and a done too but it's a kind of unfolding doing and now i claim those are the happiest moments in your life like all of a Sudden it starts to snow right for example or you when you listen to music by the way it's very hard to tell whether this is an active or a passive thing

i mean think of it you listen to beautiful music is it active or is it passive it's very hard to say i find english language is better than german there in german we only have heuren but in english i would say there is the listening which is somehow active i'm Listening but there is the hearing which is rather passive something comes to me right and there's this in between and you don't have complete control if you hear you cannot actually close off your ears you can try but it's not easy right so so it's it's

a media passivity is in between the active and the passive and that's what i call uh let's forget about this let's go to this right therefore i want to say what i want to Claim my basic claim and hopefully we can discuss it a bit more later on is that a good life is not having complete control over the world why not because on the one hand we destroy the world right and we feel we become the world becomes monstrously uncontrollable but on the other hand because the thing which you have complete control over is

dead for you it's not speaking to you you feel alienated from it I would really think think of love relationships if you have complete control over something you cannot be in resonance with it it doesn't give you anything but it's even even if you you know i want can i have two more hours please no i mean there is um in the in um i have two examples i can't decide which one to use oh okay i go back to my cat right i mean i mean you know i mean if you a lot of

you a lot of you Probably have at home a cat or a dog right a pet maybe a other pet but i i know the cats and dogs right and why are they valuable to us for example right because i claim because we have some control over them but not complete control over them right you have a when the cat comes to you when you come home for example the cat comes and it will purr and it will sneak around your legs and so on and it wants to be caressed and so on but sometimes

it's in a bad Mood so it won't purr and sometimes it's even in a worse mood it will actually lash out and hit me right and it's this element of uncontrollability of its own agency that i value most because otherwise you know a cat has some bad sides as i said sometimes it hits me quite badly and sometimes it would be sick and so on so why not have a robot cat who would purr every time you come home right of course you know that somehow wouldn't be Do the trick so i thought okay let's

let's pro program or let's assume a robot cat which some which with some random function right so the robot cat would come most of the times i come home but sometimes it wouldn't come it's a random function right but still i actually wouldn't give me anything right i would say okay today the the pro the program is such that it doesn't come so i thought okay but maybe we can come up With a more clever robot cat a cat that learns it reacts to me right artificial intelligence i i know and i think in nightmare

and you have a program of this and in groningen also right they can kind of have learning robots so the robot would the robot cat would react to me and wouldn't that be resonance listening and answering and i think if i had a cat like this i would try to find out which of my actions would trigger what kind of response Right so that's not resonance resonance what i will define in a minute requires that you are in contact with something that you cannot completely control another example here is i have to speed up i

mean i i wrote on acceleration right you know i mean it's even if you if you have plants at your home right why don't you have a plastic plant right you can have the plastic plant fl blossom all the Time right and it can have exactly the shape you want it to be in but if you have a real flower it's beyond control sometimes it would die sometimes it would not produce blossoms and so on and that's exactly it right you're in contact with something that has a voice of its own so to speak right

and this i believe is happiness and this is what we have forgotten as a culture and as individuals so what we need is resonance and resonance is exactly the third voice And it has four elements right resonance is not an emotional state resonance is a form of relationship and it has four elements something speaks to me something touches me right something addresses me so you know when you are in a everyday mode of working on your on your to-do list on on the list of aggression points of aggression right then then you're kind of via

close to the world and then all of a sudden you hear a music or you see a face or a Sunset or you read something it can it can be within your work task but nevertheless all of a sudden our armor is kind of broken there's a crack in everything right and something gets through and touches us you can see it when you when you give a talk or a discussion you can see at some points oh there's a point of resonance because actually the eyes of the listeners if you're in the classroom most kids

would sit there right sleeping Bored on their cell phones or or outright hostile right but all of a sudden there's kind of resonance and you see all their eyes kind of interacting right they're listening and it's not just listening is the first moment right something speaks to me the second element is you respond to it you respond to it physically you open up but you also respond by some something is happening within you you start to think and this thinking might Be not agreeing rejecting right disagreeing so resonance is not complete agreement resonance is a

reaction where you feel that's the second element self-efficacy i can react to it and do something with this thing but but so that's resonance something going back and forth like in the dance i'm sometimes leading i'm sometimes led and it and the new is kind of created in between right for example in the discussion which we will have in a few Minutes in in in two minutes i'm done i swear right and so the new so i can deliver a speak a speech as i always deliver then there's no resonance and maybe you ask questions

you always ask there's no question no resonance either but maybe all of a sudden you ask something and you and someone responds and another one comes up with an idea he or she never had before and then the new is born that's what hannah aaron calls natality Right the new is born out of moments of resonance which are not under our control not predictable and bought and paid for and with a it's not coming with a kind of judicial claim also and if this happens we are transformed right if we have a resonant discussion then

when we leave the room we somehow think differently of the world and of ourselves it does not have to be dramatic sometimes it's dramatic but sometimes it's only a tiny new Thought we have right but but resonance is kind of transforming us and i believe this is what we are desiring what we are yearning for this moment of being touched responding and being transformed but the problem is as i said and this is why the book is called uncontrollability or another term foreign the german term is unforefat you cannot translate this right but non-engine durability

i like a lot right the problem is with resonance you cannot fabricate it you cannot make It right you cannot buy it of course you can buy the polar lights guarantee cruise but this doesn't mean that it really touches you transforms you that something new is born out of it you yearn for this moment of touch and so on but by having it paid right by saying tomorrow night at 7 i want to see the polar light but at 7 30 i want to have my coffee right if you do it like this it's very

unlikely that you get in Resonance so so so resonance is uncontrollable or non-engineerable in two-fold sense number one is go back to our discussion right it might be that we will have no resonance tonight it happens right maybe i'm non-inspired maybe you are not inspired maybe christoph's talk is kind of talking past me or so it sometimes happens right but sometimes there is resonance right but the interesting thing is that absolutely no one absolutely no one could predict Where it happens tonight and when it happens what the thought will be that is triggered by what

kind of interaction right so i really believe resonance is is essentially non-predictable it might happen but what but what what the result will be if if we manage to somehow create a discussion between us no one can predict so resonance as the i would claim as the real core of the good life is in its essence uncontrollable and if you want to make the world Completely controllable we we produce monsters of uncontrollability and monstrous unhappiness and i think that's what i wanted to say thank you very much and sorry for being too long [Applause] thanks

a lot please join me in the see sorry i'm trying to get back to the powerpoint i'm sorry no problem i just don't know how to fix this So i'm guess one of my colleagues will come to help me out please sit down both of you thanks a lot that was a lot of input in the 40 minutes that i gave you so um we'll have we'll have about half an hour time to discuss it so i will start with you christoph because people don't know you yet and maybe some people think well We've listened

to a sociologist the word god well maybe it's a you used it once so we didn't talk about church why why uh invite a theologian to discuss this topic so that would be my first what's what's interesting for you in this whole this whole time there are two things very generally speaking there are two things which are interesting to a theologian the first thing is simply the sociological analysis i Think this is this is a description of of our of our society and of course so geologists provide many different descriptions you can have a system

theory or something like this uh but but to theologians sometimes this can help a lot but but sometimes it's boring this is this this is a critical analysis of our our uh society and of course as a theologian you have to have a stance towards society whatever Whatever it is so so i i think this is a inspiring thing for for a theologian but the other thing i and i think i have to confess this is more interesting to me is the fact uh that that resonance um can uh or uncontrollability um you did not

mention this but but this is a term which comes from theology yeah that's right at least the german uh that's unfortunate is a which stems from from uh uh Um i learned it from from his book um so so so there's a fertilization from from from theology to sociology but i think the other way around is also true and uh particularly the concept of of resonance i think is can be very helpful for for doing theology and also for doing a critical theology and how because and and and the the point is that that resonance

i i think you you explained it Uh very well yeah it's it's your concept it's yeah uh but but that that you have to have two partners and something happens in between and this is so important and we have many theological approaches particularly in the 20 20th century and also in the 21st first century which which do not make a distinction be between god and and man or god and the Human being so so either the human being is totally ontologically dependent on god and something as resonance is impossible in that or another model is

that that that god is is the absolute uh sovereign um who is who is uh so so to speak who's uh creating the subject which resonates with him uh but but that's not that's not does not fit with the or match with the concept of resonance and uh um in that respect i think resonance is is a Very good term because it helps us on the one hand to make a clear distinction between god and the human being and on the other hand that there is something that happens in between and and there is there

there's can be a kind of of unity i i think it it's very attractive i do not know whether whether i will do this but but to think about a resonance christology where the human and the divine nature in in christ Form a unity at the same time they they are separable or they're distinguishable entities so and that's that's that's more attractive to a theologian even though i also appreciate of course the the sociological energy but what would it mean what would the consequences be if you would use this type of theology if you would

look at god and man being in resonance with each other what would happen what would change i think uh in In in your book uh you say a certain concept and at a certain place you say um that you think that the judeo-christian tradition is about resonance yes and uh i wholeheartedly endorse this but at the same time i say i said i wish it was so because because of these other theological models which which which do not allow for for for Thinking the the how the autonomy in a sense or or the independence of

of of creation of the human being over against god but at the same time the absolute desire for a resonance with with with the divine so so and i think this concept makes makes it uh uh makes makes it clear and can help theologians to articulate their their their own position yes While i was listening to your lecture and my colleague bowed to me and said you know this is really overwhelming and she didn't mean your speed of talking thinking thinking of the way we try to control the world and the consequences it has is

there a way out yeah the way out is resonance yes yeah i don't yeah that cannot be bought i mean it cannot be controlled so yeah I think it's very difficult it really is difficult i mean i think i i i think i i totally agree also with what uh christopher just said i think you know religion i i mean for me i'm a sociologist right so i cannot accept as not in my function as a sociologist any metaphysical assumptions but i believe the idea of a god right is the idea that at the bottom

of our existence there is a kind of answering universe and not the silent Universe right and i believe people need this experience somehow right of um of being connected i mean i found it very interesting as a sociologist when i asked myself what are people doing when they pray for example right because the interesting thing it seemed to me that the question i had was is praying turning inward or is it turning outward and and what i realized and was uh what i was amazed about is that i thought it's it's Turning in both directions

simultaneously it's turning inward and turning outward and it's exactly this is why i talk of why i talk about axis of resonance my innermost core the bottom of my existence martin buber would write about this right is somehow connected to the ultimate encompassing reality and but this is an experience i think it's very some people find it in nature if they don't find it in religion right i mean today i was actually i was in Denmark yesterday so i've had to shave in shape to the north sea you know and standing at the ocean right

at the i'm not even sure whether you could call that ocean but yeah why not i mean it's towards the atlantic right here you know and you feel the waves rolling in you really sh you really feel how your body changes its whole posture right you feel the waves rolling in and and the wind and it's somehow feeling Connected my inner and a lot of people say only at the ocean or in the mountains i can feel myself it's the same axis right my innermost with the outermost and when you listen to music in art

it's the same experience right people close their eyes even a punk musician like henry rowland says music is closer to myself than my own breath so it's my innermost reality it's coming from the outside so what on the one hand i want to say it's it's not Something beyond our our culture or conception right but on the other hand we discussed this yesterday the uncontrollability book ends in very pessimistic notes and it's very pessimistic because i think i mean we would be mad to to intentionally give up control right i mean of course i don't

suggest oh let's go hungry again right oh let's all let's get cold again or so right or let's no longer use i would not even say let's no Longer use the smartphone also right it would be somehow mad and it would not deliver what we want right and it actually you're bringing everything under control i have a chapter which i find very important in our bureaucracies right even the desire for justice right and transparency is kind of when you discuss it with people right very often it's kind of it's killing resonance i would say let

me give you one short example For example there are young young people right they want to in i believe in nightmares and you could have this experience they want to create something right let's build a new house of music here or so right and because actually in leipzig the story is this the leipzig the mayor of leipzig said there was a kind of setting what would what about the need to turn leipzig into a resonant space a resident city right and then he came up with this Example you have young people who want to appropriate

make leipzig their city resonate with it and they come up with a great idea and they would say let's build this house and then he would say oh that's a great idea that's fantastic you see the beaming eyes you see the resonance but first we have to get the money might take two years then we have to get admission from that that bureaucracy then we have to test it for safety and for security and then you see How the eyes close down again it's kind of so what do we do here i don't want to

say let's let's forget about finance and let's get forget about safety so i don't see and transparency and anti-corruption and whatever you have to so i ended in pessimistic notes and thought let's turn to the theologian to answer that perhaps i i can raise a critical question because uh i i think you do as if uh resonance Was possible with with with every you speak of section of the world so so it can be uh different different axes so the the horizontal x yeah which is interpersonal yeah the vertical x with with the transcendence whatever

yeah the dial knob yeah but now i call it material because diagonal is too confusing okay but anyway but but my question is isn't isn't the the the the horizontal like so So the interpersonal because isn't this the paradigm no because because the uncontrollable is due to the freedom of the other the the freedom of the other he can he can always he's always free to react differently and and the uncontrollability of of of of the worlds of of other parts of the world pets you talked about yeah uh um is of a different dimension

of is of of different kind but you would not would Not agree with that no i want to disagree with it but i think this is i'm this is what a theologian probably needs to say no but but i think you know the point really is what what really struck me is that you're absolutely right i mean i i have this four x's i i think i had it on the slides but i left it out that you we can get in resonance with each other with other people in love or in friendship i believe

even democracy is the idea of having a kind of Citizenship which is in resonance so i think there we agree on then but then i think and i think this is what we think in modernity but it's not the only dimension of resonance right for me i really claim it's there is material resonances with will resonate with objects with a space for example but also with some artifacts objects of art or so but also materiality is with wood or with whatever it is with snow for example right and i think i find it very Interesting

what you said like two minutes ago that we as humans maybe we have this basic need a desire at least to resonate with other people with with the world around us and maybe that's also the connection between what you call the the transcendent but i think theologians have the idea that that and sometimes i think they are right right i don't know as i said i don't want to have the wisdom i don't know let's discuss it but i think there Is a tendency in theology and in modernity to think that the only resonant thing

is other human beings and the rest of the world is silent and dead so we have to bring it under our control i mean that's what later in this could say right modern beings are the only beings who live in a totally silent universe and and if you could turn to poetry for example or so right they remind you and you see It with children of course who live in an animated world they would talk to the to the to the how is this thing called i forgot the carpet yes and to all the other

things right and any in an animated world a living world we are in contact with the stars and with the planets and with the and with everything so the fact that we think all of this is state the only one resonating is me and the other human beings is true Yes so that's so that's what is sorry so that's what is happening that we have a very basic human need to resonate at all and then first we have declared the outer world dead yes and now we're trying to sort of make the the other also

something that we need i mean we want to the other to shut up right i mean think of democracy right the problem with democracy right now is we don't Want to listen to the other and be transformed by it but we think of the others either as nazis or as traitors also it's true and we don't even want to listen to our own body and psyche we just want to bring it under control all right i want to be able to sleep immediately in the evening and i want to wake up immediately in the morning

and i want to have my my heart pressure at my heart beat at the right rate and my blood pressure at the right rate and Everything and even my you know i want to have my my eyes different so i go to the doctor and and so on so it's really are we are dislearning being in resonance with anything but i i think you are right this is the kind of disenchantment of of modernity so that we that we resonate uh if if at all only with with other human beings but but but the rest

of the world but but this is not what i wanted to say so so i i Uh fully agree that that that it's possible to to resonate with the sunset or with with with music or whatever but but the question is if you the the the metaphors you use to describe resonance always presuppose some some kind of of agency uh um behind so something speaks yes yes and that's why i i thought that that the interpersonal relationship is a kind of of paradigm Not denying that there are other forms of presidents are also possible and

that's that's i do not want to to immediately go to transcendence or no but i agree with you yeah but but no i agree with it yeah sorry yeah but not immediately go to transcendence but but then uh if this were right uh that that that this is a there is a special form of of of resonance which we have with with uh with other human beings or with other persons um then you speak About the the the desire for for the uncontrollable yeah then then then we could say that we perhaps have a desire

to resonate with something which we cannot uh which we cannot describe or which we we have not access in that kind of course it must be accessible so it cannot be the the absolute uh hidden god or whatever but but that that we have that desire to resonate with with uh something which which is is beyond this world Which is different from from this world yeah that's interesting so we need to we you're saying we have a desire to resonate with things that are within this world so sunset or people and maybe we also have

another uh desire to resonate with something that we cannot that we cannot control because it's of course of course we cannot but this is the problem i think that's You know i mean no i think you know i think it's not enough i don't know i mean for me i always discuss this right for me the world is everything there is so if there is a god he's part of the world i mean that's just the way i would think of him or her right i mean you know the world is you know when when

you wake up if you're unconscious also it's really true if you wake up out of unconsciousness or out of Deep sleep before you know that who you are and even that you are that's what mello ponti says he says something is there something is present it's the first moment of our consciousness and only later on i realize oh that's me and who am i oh yeah sometimes you don't know and you don't know where you are and so and then then the world takes shape but the separation between me and the world already is a

kind of secondary step Right so i think if there is a god for me he's part of the world he's part of what is there waiting for me when i wake up right either within me or outside of me i find this very strange this dualism that on the one hand there's a word and then there is something beyond the world that i mean it can be a different world but it's still part of the world for me but you know to think that resonance is only possible with the Thing beyond the world while within

the world everything is dead and under control i think that's exactly the mistake we made okay let's get out of this very theoretical um discussion let's get to something very concrete because when i when can i make one yes one i'm trying to make sure non-discipline but but i totally agree with you i think this is something i have to reflect on with the agency Thought right it's really true i believe you can only be in resonance with something to which you attribute at least some form of resonance like a mountain or so or or

a piece of music or so i really you know in the book i permanently or like like a light motif i use uh the ego leave it's playing the moonlight sonata by by beethoven right and there he he experiences this moonlight sonata is Somehow always beyond my control i cannot really get it under control and now we think oh it's beethoven but maybe it's not beethoven because in the sonata there's something of his time and something of the logic of western music and so on and something of music generally so he there is a kind

of agency for him in in the sonata so i agree with the agency aspect sorry no no no i just i wanted to ask because before Today when i spoke to people about you coming here and giving a lecture about uncontrollability and how you know this is something we are losing and we need to get it back and people said well there's a war in ukraine if there's something that's uncontrollable then something like that can we still speak of uncontrollability as something positive i mean yeah i think we can i mean because that's i mean

the war in the Ukraine is the monster of uncontrollability i mean that's what i it's really true i mean i'm not i'm not praising uncontrollability per se that would as i said that would just be stupid right so like like let's not defend against wars or against disease because that's uncontrollable that would be wrong right so i distinguish my claim in the book is that we have to actually i think you can only be in resonance with something that is And then i did not come up with a good term i mean it's either half

controllable maybe you could say right or reachable but you know think of a love relationship on the one hand i mean a war can never be i mean never is a difficult word because of the uncontrollability you know within the midst of war there can be resonance i mean i know it's an appalling idea but i think it's true right when you when you live in the Ruins and then in the sadness and the disease then it might happen that this tiny smile of a child or so or the small gesture of someone giving you

a breath is really creating a depth a resonant depth resonance relative resonance which is far deeper than everything we experience in our supermarket world or so right i really think it we should not be too fast and excluded there right but of course but nevertheless generally you can only be in resonance with something You open up to voluntarily on the one hand right at least you somehow agree to it so that's that's that it's your own voice responding and not someone forcing you to do something right yes and also it has to be semi semi-controllable

i would almost say you know because i mean i cannot be in resonance with anything i have absolutely no contact to let's say it could be the bible or the capital i always use these two because they are Opposites right capital by marks or the bible i can be a lot of people are in resonance with both books right and by the way they are in resonance because somehow it's uncontrollable what the bible says i'm permanently discussing it with it i don't quite understand it i don't quite agree i'm in a debate that's resonance and

actually it's the same with marx because It's very hard to understand the capital right but of course you cannot be in resonance with the bible or the capital if you don't have any knowledge of it it's completely unfortugba right so it's semi-controllable i can take it and i can read it but i don't completely control it right so that's that's the that's the form of of controllability so if you're bombed if you're bombed and hurt generally that of course it's the opposite of resonance Because then you close down you're just hurting the world literally turns

deaf and dead and silent and hard and cold to you [Music] yeah and you are the victim of someone who wants to have control yes yes the the people and on the on the ground so to say yes yes but if we look at um the the power so i mean europe and china and the us cetera They are they are in different positions yeah sure but but but i i think this this this is not the uncontrollability uh which which which belongs to to resonance um so i think this is this is quite evident

as you said within these scenarios of course scenes of of of uh resonance are possible there was a ukraine girl there was a report from from ukraine and there was a Little girl singing yeah it was it was really touching yeah maybe that's that's that's something that but um yeah yeah i would agree there are small elements kind of incidences of resonance but the problem is what i when i when i talk about modernity in the way i just did i think i make a mistake because it sounds like modernity is just destroying resonance And

i think that's too easy that's actually what i wanted to say first when i started to write the resonance book and then i realized how stupid that is because modernity has also provided spaces for resonance right giving people freedom to develop their own voice right for example women or so right it's not i mean for a long time in in in cultural history and in some cases still today they are not allowed to speak their own voice to find their frequency in Whatever it is in terms of so modernity has created spaces where you can

find your own form of belief right your own form of profession or your own form of loving for example if you if you prevent forms of sexual desire right which are not heterosexual so on then of course it's kind of preventing people from getting in in resonance so modernity has tried in education in family spaces and elsewhere we try at least to create spaces of residents which allow this Kind of relationship and what effect has corona had i mean we have been well it's been two years now and a lot of students have been in

classes only online and a lot of other meetings and so on have been online how does this relate to resonance can you have resonance in digital meetings yeah you can i mean you know the problem with the uncontrollability of the world i mean it i say no i think i'm Conceptually that's it it's consistent right i claim you cannot engineer it right so you cannot say let's have this setting if the light is like this and the temperature is like this then we will get in resonance but the opposite is true too you cannot exclude

it right even under the most unlikely conditions there can be resonance as we just said in the war right and therefore certainly in digital encounters sometimes there is deep resonance i would i would think so For example i mean i was just doing a seminar with students from nanjing in bay bay in china it was really fascinating right because it was on critical theory and sociology and students in china had the chance to discuss with students in yena and even in breakout rooms and of course there sometimes it works sometimes it didn't or so right

but there are sometimes for forms of resonance but nevertheless there are elements which make it Difficult or unlikely you know i say you cannot engineer resonance but you can engineer spaces of resonance and the problem with the digital world is i mean as we all know and have experienced i mean you know i mean physical co-presence like what we're doing right now is different from screen presence from a number of reasons i mean the most probably the most important reason is that at the screen you cannot look into each other's eyes like you can either

See the others eyes or the other one sees your eyes but you cannot kind of exchange glances and i believe really this is in our wired in our biology we are we are led to read faces right it's the small it's beyond our control my face and my whole body reacts to what you say beyond my knowing right and a lot of this is kind of suppressed of course and it's also even in the acoustics right i discussed this i was at a at a Conference about hearing listening and hearing and i kind of was

shocked what they told me that you know if it you digitally the voice only comes through this kind of loudspeaker but your own voice is different i really experienced this when i thought why is it when i when i talk when i give talks or lectures at the university for the whole day i'm never hoarse in the a hyzer at the end of the day but when i yell at my microphone at home i feel totally my I'll lose my voice and then they really explain to me why this is the way you experience your

own voice while yelling at the microphone is different but i think the most important thing is the physical co-presence look like like what we are here right now right we all see the bright lights here we feel the temperature a certain smell in the air and if there's a noise outside for example we all know that the others have the same noise so we are we are already In a space of resonance right we listen to or we hear what we hear we smell what we smell we see what we see this connects us and

at home when you are at the screen you also have a surrounding there is a smell and a temperature and a noise but you have to block it out because it's completely irrelevant for the interaction so this creates a kind of a bodily disposition which is kind of alienating or alienated so it's at least More unlikely in corona situations right and also there is a basic distrust the other might be the killer i mean that's really bad right i mean the other person you encounter potentially could kill you right or could kill other people and

even worse you could kill them because there's something in your body you don't know so this of course kind of creates distrust between people and and this trust creates a kind of closing you know It's it's not just corona for example when you when you have a fear of the other or when you are under time pressure then you don't want to open up to spaces of resonance which are uncontrollable when you are afraid you don't want to have uncontrollable spaces so i think the overall the corona effect is not too beneficial on us right

but but but is is is is uh let's say the negative effects and and uh to make it um Unlikely that that um that resonance happens with in this this lockdown situation in corona is this more due to to the fact that of of the disease itself or more to the to the is it is it an effect of the of the trying to get it under control so the disease is under control yeah i agree with this i think i think what money i i think i mean i mean corona is interesting in terms

of Acceleration because for the first time in 250 years we actually slowed down you can measure it seismologically right the movement the shaking or the vibration of the planet has gone down because 95 percent of the airplanes have been grounded so it's fascinating right and of course it's interesting in this in this in in terms of controllability because i think at first it was a complete shock because corona or the the the corona virus really is a monster of Uncontrollability we did not have scientific knowledge of it we did not have medical control of it

we could not foresee the economic effects we could not regulate it politically and what is much worse it was beyond our individual control you cannot hear it you cannot see it you cannot smile it touch it it's definitely beyond control so it's a total shock to our culture the world is turning totally uncontrollable and what we did then Politically was trying to bring it under control at any price almost right i mean we never paid a price like this right ground 95 percent of the planes stop all soccer games that's outrageous [Laughter] close down the

universities and so on it was the desperate attempt and you know at first they said we want to track down every single infection this clearly is our modern standard Reaction try to bring complete control over it but of course the problem is as i said that's why i'm pessimistic i i don't want to suggest otherwise i mean i don't want to suggest let it just happen right so i don't know let's turn to the questions from the audience and i will look at the people at home first so if you have questions and you still

you Haven't yet posted you can still go to minty and uh enter the code in your screens you can also you don't have to have a question you can also just disagree i can already see that we have more questions than we can answer so thanks a lot for you at home for uh for participating and posing your questions i will try to do what i can wherever shall i start let's see Are we now in resonance with pollution somebody asks or can we be maybe i don't know i mean i think not i think

not i mean for me not every form of exchange is resonance right i mean with pollution i think i mean you know i mean i think there are two i mean i distinguish actually between uh well between them resonant forms of being in the world and mute forms or Death forms right which i which i use the term alienation which maybe is not not maybe it wasn't the best choice right but there are two forms of alienated relationship with the world one is kind of total indifference right i mean there are many things even in

this space in this room i don't resonate with i don't particularly resonate with this chair but i i'm just indifferent with it i just sit on it and that's it but then there is repulsion i Hate it and actually repulsion is is repulsion for me is the opposite of resonance because it means uh because either you know repulsion means a kind of kind of opposing powers right and it could be because i hate it there's something i hate then the repulsion is on my side or because it's threatening me right i think it's dangerous then

the repulsion is from the other side but in all cases i want to refuse resonance if It's threatening i want to close and defend right and if if i hate it i want to hit it and to to impose my will on it right so it's not resonance and pollution i think certainly could not be something i want to open up to get in contact with be transformed by it i might be afraid that it transforms me but but then i want to prevent it so i think pollution is very tough case i think we

cannot be in resonance with pollution i mean the the i mean another Question is can we be in resonance with death that's that's a tricky question i leave that to the theologian yeah it's it's uh what would you say actually i'm curious i i think i i think we can of cour of course um even even if we do not have uh belief in in afterlife also um i think we can can resonate because it's the high degree is it mortality or death we resonate With even death as as the end of of of our

life as as something which which uh which is gives a definite end to our life yeah um i think we can can resonation to resonance is should be possible with with it i find it yeah maybe you're right but i mean my answer is that i mean death is the ultimate silence i mean at least right at least for us so yeah And therefore i think we can be in resonance with the fact of death but not with death itself but maybe that's getting started but you can you can interpret it in very many different

ways you can see it as absolute peace that's right even if you do not believe in afterlife it can be yeah it it it's uh uh it's it's it it redeems you from from from from from all the the yeah The yeah the problems you have and so so so i think it's it's possible it's at least possible it happens it's uncontrollable but i i think it's possible yeah interesting somebody else asked is does controllability lead to conservatism or let me add to fear maybe yeah yeah no oh both you start with the concept yeah

i mean that's a good question i mean i Think it's a good question i thought about it for quite some time i thought now i'm turning older so i'm apparently i'm getting totally conservative which i don't like right but i think it's not i mean but but but it's true i mean controllability that's controllability i would say uncontrollability would lead to conservatism right let things just happen right let them just be so to Speak right so that that is a that's uh that could be um that could be an answer but you know i mean

i mean in many aspects i think there are two ways i mean one way would be we control nature right we tell nature what to do i mean actually i think of something i mean it's a very i really i want to be sensitive there and and and i know it's difficult but for example Also my bodily nature for example can i change my sex my gender right for example right so it's a very interesting question i think there you see there are two positions one is no we should be able to decide it's also

about abortion right i mean the woman decides right whether she wants to have a child or not so that would mean we are the sovereign masters and then there's the other side who says no Nature has made you a man or a woman so you have to accept it or nature has given you a child i mean somehow all right so you have to accept it and i think both forms are not what i mean with resonance resonance means i take i take serious this kind of otherness with it with this which is within me

either within my own body actually in both cases with my own body but it's not decided whether i do so to speak or whether the other takes the Lead but it's a kind of listening and answering and being transformed in this process and i think this certainly is not conservative right normally conservatism is just giving one side the the voice i think to be open to be transformed and yes this is the opposite of consciousness absolutely yeah i think in political terms this is absolutely true i think politically you know we call that right-wing populists

often i did or they Call themselves identitarian yeah the idea is we have to stay as we are we are white christian i don't know what right so we have to stay so and they actually say well if we take in all those foreigners we will be transformed and then of course my answer would be yes exactly that's the point of life right i mean you're you're killing yourself if you don't you don't want to be exposed to the other yes because this might have a transformative power but even in their Thinking they even say

right if we take in all these muslims there will be minarets in that instead of churches and there you really see the problem either it's my church or it's your minaret and of course that's that's the problem right no it's in between the minority and the church get into kind of resonance and then you will be born out of it so so it's not conservative yeah thank you let's turn to the audience here in the Theater hall if you have a question please raise your hand and one of my colleagues will come with a microphone

yes a lady over there well thank you very much i was wondering perhaps for professor rosa but also perhaps for the other speaker to to ask to answer the question um would you think that our shortage of resonance has something to do with the decrease of religion in Western societies yes yeah yeah i thank you for this question i i would yeah my answer is yes right but the question is what is the cause and what is the effect so to speak right i believe that you really see a kind of crisis of in german

i would say an roof barkite right i mean there is a there is a german term not the german term for to Stop aufhur right and probably similar in dutch yeah okay yeah but it doesn't have anything to do with hearing yeah that's the interesting thing i mean you know in german when you when you say stop it right i would say here off right but it literally means listen up so to speak right and i think i find this very interesting because normally i'm immersed i have to do this i have to do that

i'm short on time Leave me alone or so or what does this idiot want or so and our fern would mean stop for a minute and listen up and and the idea is let yourself be called by something something is calling you but you you you you you need to allow something to call you right and of course that's the religious moment for me right something is calling you god has given you has called you by your name right for example or god has given you the breath Of life also right so so i believe

so my claim is there is a crisis of call ability and roof back height right we don't want to be called by god but it's also the democratic problem all the others who believe differently or who vote differently or have different opinions we don't want to hear them i want to kill them right or get them drive them out of the country or whatever and i believe even in our in our subjective in our in our daily lives We lose the capacity to be called to be open to this transformative other right so i think

so probably so i think probably that that there's a crisis of belief and a crisis of democracy and even a crisis of subjectivity has the same root right the crisis of resin and so to speak we don't we no longer are capable of listening up and let ourselves be called so i don't think i probably would say i don't think that The decrees of the decrease of belief is the the is the is the cause of the social crisis i rather think it's the other way around right because we have created a world in which

we don't want to be called we we lose our belief yeah yeah i would agree because i do not think that that um the the decrease of of religion um the question is where where people in form times More callable i'm not i'm not sure whether this this is the case i think that the concept of religion of course changed during during the centuries is not the same and uh in in the middle ages or early modernity the concept of relation was quite different from from as we as we have have it now so so

i don't think whether If the diagno diagnosis is true that there is a lack of resonance in in our world if this is true i would not uh blame it to to the to the decrees off of religion i would be cautious to answer this question with yes thank you another question yes in the back the person most of the back With the yeah well anyway um thank you for the very inspiring speech i would love to go back to your example in leipzig and you said that the shining bright eyes would go down once

you bring up bureaucracy yes is there a way to sustain and maintain resonance you mean in that case or generally Generally and in that case when you're talking to young people and there's also the reality and the resonance with the possibility yeah how do you keep the balance there yeah i mean i think we would dream of i mean you know we had this idea of civil society as a kind of a living sphere of resonance right where people would kind of contribute and you know my my ideas i really believe there is maybe there

is a possibility But it's very very difficult right i i always think there is a simple test you could do it in nightmare now for example in my city in yena in the in the small city actually in the middle of the city there is an empty square it's huge it's a parking lot for 20 years there has been a lot of discussion of what to do there right and i think there is a very simple test of whether there is a kind of resonance or not because it depends on you ask citizens what their

what now There is a new plan right and the question there's a new plan and a new project so the question is do people say oh now we are building in yena a new i don't know castle whatever it is a new building right a new library for example right if people say we are now building a new library then there's a form of resonance i am in contact with i feel self-efficacy it's us right and they might say this even if they were not for building the library but instead for Building a shopping center

or theater or so right but i i was taking part in this decision right and the other way is if they say oh now they are building this theater there but it has nothing to do with me right so i think it's a very simple trick right but because you came with a with the example of leipzig you can do it in your school i mean even if i'm not sure whether you but let's assume some people here might be teachers right what do students and Teachers say now we are building a new or we

we are getting new windows or now they are introducing new windows into our school building right there you actually see the difference between residents and non-resonance and the question is can we politically i think it's possible but it's very very difficult and part of the problem is time pressure right because it does take a lot of time to somehow create this space where people i Call it anfavandlung right for me there are two forms of appropriation you cannot translate that either i think i'm the nightmare of every translator i mean there is i in german

i distinguish between an eichmann and just means i make it mine i buy a book so i have it under i can't but means it's transformative i pro i call an icon in english i call it instrumental appropriation now i have it I can use it but there's a transformative appropriation if you read the book it's somehow you know it changes who you are almost right so i think citizens need to to use this kind of transformative appropriation of the structures they live in and that's exactly the world i dream of right a resonance fear

a resonant political and public sphere but it's very hard to create there i cannot even turn to the Theologian not even here no and you were even speaking of time pressure and i i feel it too because it's half past nine which means that what do you mean anuta one more question okay a short one then please okay i'll try um my question was is whether this middle voice which i reckon is some kind of dynamic state whether for you this is a state of relaxation or like like acceptance flow Or more attention there's a

greek poet i think it was a greek poet but it sounds good he talks about an instrument which is like a bow and arrow and the bow is in tension and he says the harmony is when it's tense so is it for you a state and something you have to endure or something that's Loose that's a very good question and i i find it very hard to answer it i mean to answer it correctly i think i mean as i said over dinner i actually want to write on energy right my next book because it

has something to do with this with the flow of energy right i mean if you have if you are i mean for example if you if potentially you might say uh of this evening right there was so much energy In the space or you might say the opposite there was no energy there right so who