2019 Is Only A Few Hours Away

2019 is only a few hours away. And, of course, after the disquieting, even ominous events in 2018, we will all be concerned about what does happen in the coming year.

I would like to share with you the thoughts that take me from 2018 to the New Year. And, I would like to find among all of you, that I am so proud to know, some voices to spread the message: We must make the threshold to 2019 the ‘Cusp of Change’.

 

Let me put this into context. 

It had been a wonderful year, 2018, in the little world, which Sabine and I have created for ourselves. 

And, I am sure, when you look back into your own memories of 2018, you will find a compatible patchwork and sequence of events that just made you happy.  

Sabine and myself enjoyed extensive travels to our ’homes’ away from home  /  We have spent unforgettable, never-ending summer days and evenings on our roof terrace in Wiesbaden talking to friends, pleasantly carried away by the best food cultures, viewing the vineyards on the opposite slope of the Nerotal. ‘Nature’ has been so very generous to German vineyards this year. (Yet, we do not forget, the same ’Nature’ made so many people on this globe suffer from climate change, wildfires and hurricanes, especially this year)  /  We were so happy to widen our family circle and friends in 2018  /  We were granted the opportunity to maintain old relationships from over 60 years, celebrating exiting Anniversaries  /  We will nor forget Joseph Marioni, meeting the “painter” on the Vernissage of his Liquid Light Art Exhibition in Wiesbaden. I have collected through my life a few of his outstanding works of art  /  We will remember for years to come the ‘Gundermann Event’ in Bonn, meeting the Film team and Gundermann’s wife, viewing the film and listening to a wide selection of the Gundermann ‘oeuvre’   /// ….. And we are not ashamed of the roaring engine sound of our Pxxxxxe cars, knowing they are the last fossil remembrances, we will have had the pleasure to drive for the last time.

Yet with all these warm remembrances we know, 2019 will not and cannot just be just a continuation of that ! We want and must become ‘agents of change’ and we hope you will help us.

 

Outside our little world the waves of global affairs have come close to a dreadful sequence of Tsunamis 

So much ‘information’ has been spread about US President No. 45, the Theresa May Brexit, the Turkish majority waiting for Erdogan to tell them what to do , Kim Jong Un and his fireballs, Jamal Khashoggi’s last day, the Trump-Russia probe, Merkel’s stepping down, the MeToo movement taking a global view, Imran Khan, Christine Blasey Ford - a sad life story ridiculed by No. 45, the Venezuela crisis, the Yellow-Vest Protests in France calling for a fundamental change that can easily go beyond ’68, the  trade war between US and China, No. 45 stepping down from the Iran Nuclear Deal, Worldwide Terror Attacks and gun violence, Trails of migrants in Europe and the Americas, the inhuman Yemen crisis, the Rohingya crisis tolerated by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the Crimean Bridge and the Ukraine disputes …. and the Pope calling homosexuality just a temporary fad.

 

We have great difficulties to decide the ’fifty shades of’ fake-news on all these subjects that have darkened our understanding of what has really happened and what we finally need to be alarmed about.

 

My personal advice: let us read news articles in as many languages as we know, from as many news sources that we could lay our hands / eyes on, from as many political view points as we can find and let us look especially at those that we would normally not read …. and only then evaluate validity options …. and let us talk about our findings. 

 

WE HAVE ACCESS TO SO MANY CHANNELS TO COMMUNICATE ! 

 

The necrologies are sweeping closer to  where I am

And, of course, thoughts creep up, that we might run out time to do all we have planned to finish, that we will not find the critical mass required to support the  ‘Cusp of Change’.  

I am concerned

I am extremely concerned about the following key items: 

(1) The wide-spread demands in our on-boarding generations that the ’State’ is responsible for our personal mishaps and unrealistic dreams, that the State should provide the unconditional basic income  /  And if the State does not do enough, there must be immediate support from the parents, heritage-distribution long before their lifetime ends

(2) Social media are blamed for the ’teenage mental health crisis’, the ‘rise of populism’, the ‘Fake News Problem’ and even the ‘decline of whitetail deer herd’s in New Zealand’. 

What a Global Comedy!

Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before US and European Parliament Committees to explain the social media platform’s role in the Cambridge Analytica data activities, where everybody could / did know that Trumps election as No. 45, the nonsense promises of the Theresa May Brexit, Modi’s elections in Gujarat and Delhi and many, many other political events of this kind were contracted by those that now stood up as judges.

 

(3) Our loss of remembrance for historical facts that have happened in our life’s times .… It seems very likely that history “overly remembers” some events at the expense of others. 

 

Our objections against foreigners, their treatment of women f. ex.,  sometimes grossly forgets the historical events that changed these very same items in our society just a couple of decades ago. And, the ‘red lines’ for the far-right political parties are clearly drawn in our ‘personal history memory’ …. have we forgotten to tell the on-boarding generations about these red lines and the consequences?

(4) Meeting of foreigners …. dislike, disgust, animosity, bad opinion, bias, contemptuousness, discrimination, enmity, information intolerance, narrow mindedness, preconceived notion, racial intolerance, xenophobia ….

Why can we not accept foreigners as our friends, work companions  and neighbors next door?

  

I would like to find among all of you, that I am so proud to know, active supporters to make the threshold to 2019 the ‘Cusp of Change’ in our lives and our societies. Help us find a channel of communication that we can build for our ’Swimming against the deadly tide’ Movement.

 

Let us get the Gandhi sentence across to make a first step