The terms “cloud cuckoo land” and “counteraction” do not merely both begin with the letter C; they have more in common than one might initially think.
We are all familiar with this special way of perceiving the world, even if we experience it only rarely. When we are in this state, others may not notice anything unusual about us. We act as we usually do, perhaps less detached, more connected to and closer to everything. It is a childlike, friendly perception, a sense of being at one with the world. Then we feel at home and safe in the world, as if the birds were chirping, the flowers blooming, and the trees rustling just for us; as if we were the only ones they meant. Then we are met by the gaze of the clouds, which look down upon us and do not drift around up there in a strange and meaningless way; instead, they invite us onto their cloud-backs, so that, like Mary Poppins, we may journey into a distance that lies within us, close at hand. It feels as though a door has opened that we did not even know existed: a door to heaven, a door to earth.
Even if we are familiar with such a state of mind, is this not just wishful thinking? Reality is not like that. Aren’t just a few names, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Friedrich Merz, enough to bring this castle in the clouds crashing down? Don’t we need resistance against a state that is increasingly distancing itself from its constitutional foundations? Don’t we need a general strike, an occupation of the arms factories, uprisings, street battles, a revolution, anarchy? Even if you have silently answered “yes” to one of these questions, have you ever asked yourself why none of this is even close to becoming reality? Where does this Coca-Cola-fuelled, smartphone-addled powerlessness come from?
Taking on tanks with an e-bike?
There are plenty of answers to that. Because most of us hope that “everything will sort itself out” which, in my opinion, it will not. Because we still benefit quite comfortably from the system, so we have more to lose than to gain. Because, although we know what is happening, any resistance seems futile. Because we do not even notice what is going on in Germany, Europe, and the Western world. Because we are so co-opted by the system that we do not even notice it, as in the famous example of the fish that knows nothing of the water it swims in. Or simply because we are cowards.
I suspect that none of these reasons stands on its own. Even the most passive among us have a hunch that the water carrying them contains poison. Presumably, most of us are somewhere in between. But then there is one further reason, not yet named, why we do not voice our outrage. And that has a great deal to do with realism.
To me, anyone who resorts to violence seems like someone riding an e-bike into a tank, tears in their eyes. Even the instruments of power that the nation-state could and would wield against insurgents are terrifying; the instruments of NATO’s cognitive warfare are far more effective, because they directly attack our thinking, incidentally, another “because” reason; not to mention the possibilities available to someone like Peter Thiel.
Becoming Invisible
But realism has nothing to do with throwing in the towel. It makes us look for other ways. The best way to neutralize a tank is not to give it an enemy; if the gunner has no one left to shoot at, he becomes unemployed. That may not be the best metaphor, but it is one that makes it understandable when I take the position: We must render this system obsolete. Fighting against it is not only futile but also pointless. Why? That would be another topic. Only when we, without any struggle, but with all our strength and all the means at our disposal, establish a parallel system that is no longer static but fluid; that no longer relies on growth but on connection; that no longer relies on taking but on sharing; that sees us not as rulers of the world but as co-inhabitants of the “Earth biotope”, only then do we have a real chance. For such a parallel system is, in every single one of its variables, so far removed from the old, deadly system that it acts like Alberich’s cloak of invisibility. We become virtually invisible, or, even if the cloak is torn from our heads, we are not taken seriously.
The Shared World as a Conceptual Foundation
But, you might, or hopefully will, now ask yourself: What was that again about this “special way of perceiving the world” mentioned at the beginning, about this so-called cloud cuckoo land? What does all this have to do with counteraction, with resistance? More than you think. Because this is not a dream state, but a completely different, expanded, more intense form of wakefulness in which we can calculate and write, work and program, only more powerfully and less limited than usual, because we are more fully, indeed completely, present to ourselves. It is a state in which we no longer have to struggle, but in which things fall into place. And a state in which we can truly love and be fully committed to the grand, long-term goal. For without the vision of a world that is not merely better, but actually good, where the concept of “the shared world” is not an unfamiliar term but the very foundation of our thinking, we quickly run out of spiritual breath. But even fellow human beings for whom Brother Mole, Cousin Sparrow, or Grandfather Whale are foreign concepts might perhaps find meaning in Schiller’s “All men shall become brothers.” As long as we do not dare to dream this great dream, everything else remains an illusion.
