Hello, world. I'd like to step out for a moment. You hurt me. That's what complicates things with you and me, honestly. I suffer from you. I suffer from world-weariness.
From the Elysium and the luck to be born just here
I had a great night. I slept long and slowly glide out of the realm of dreams into a new spring morning. The sun sneaks through the turquoise curtains at the window and slowly you get the impression that the world is awakening, the new life is beginning and the eternal cycle of nature is again dedicated to blossoming, greenery - in short: to beauty.
I wiggle my toes, look to the right, say goodbye to my love and wish him ritualistically that he please drive carefully. Then I cuddle up into the heavy blankets one last time and decide to get up carefully. A new day, wonderful. So many expectations, so much you can do!
And then I check the news. A terrorist attack. Again. Dead, wounded, insecure. Here and there. Fear is around. Hesitantly, it crawls into the smallest corners of our optimistic post-war world tolerance society and spreads in the form of hatred, resistance, new old borders, debates, and human rights issues.
Make sure that we once again discuss things that really do not need to be discussed. Are fleeing people allowed to stay here? Do they get a roof over their heads? Or don't "they" belong "back where they come from"? Holy shit.
And it goes on: Tendencies of splitting off here and there, everyone wants to do his thing again, you don't trust yourself anymore. The Open Border Euro World, in which we Millenials grew up, begins to crumble under our eyes.
And we? Baking cakes. Photographing Monsteras. Paint our walls á la Greenery. Muck out. Minimalize. Googling to Tiny Houses. Become vegan.
In such moments I want to scream and throw everything away. I want to run my head against the wall because I can't believe what's happening out there. I darkly remember the history lessons, from the Empire to World War II, and it runs down my back in crystals.
If a new Biedermeier is attested to us then - could we defend ourselves against it? Isn't that true? Don't we seek protection in the domestic, don't we currently throw horticultural art, self-sufficiency, zero waste, minimalism, living in green and animal-free cosmetics on golden armchairs? Don't we consume hip and pretty lifestyle products as if there were no tomorrow?
Well, maybe there isn't. Maybe we suspect something like that. Perhaps it is already floating in the air, this specter of evil fear that it could soon pass by with the carefree life in the ecstatic I-don't-care capitalism.
Perhaps that's exactly what the care and maintenance of one's own four walls, the boom of the interior and the propaganda of the clean, the Marie-Kondo orderly is: the escape from the chaos out there. Our new Biedermeier.
Renunciation is a statement, voting is political
But wait, it's not that simple after all. Once again.
Because our new Biedermeier is different. We withdraw from political activity, at first sight. We no longer go out on the street, we no longer smash windows, we no longer chain ourselves to railway tracks.
And yet we are political. We show what doesn't suit us - in a new way: by using the possibilities of the new technologies, which are far more than just a distracting, virus-blasting, terrorist-supporting heap of rare earths. We use the Internet and its reach to do one thing: connect.
And to show that things are different from the mainstream. Rather: that we want a new mainstream. A more conscious one. A simpler one. A more sustainable one. A political one.
One who makes a statement by consciously dispensing with plastic bottles. The one who, by leaving convenience products on the supermarket shelf or in the fast-food drive-in on the left, makes it clear that we are no longer in the mood for exploiting the environment, coal mining, child labor in Bangladesh, poisoned rivers and plastic-contaminated seas.
That we are tired of being sold for stupid and being educated to become zombie-like, remote-controlled consumer herds animals. That we want to reinvent ourselves - in a return to what was once considered old and dusty: shaving planes, soap, plants, gardening, our personal little windowsill autonomy dream. Bourgeoisie with mission.
Shared via Instagram, liking on Facebook, writing articles in front of the computer, we want to spread this message, which comes along without clickbait and minute attention, but rather like a leisurely wave through the feeds and channels. Motivating other people to join in. Encourage people to think. That everyone can start with themselves, on a small scale.
That we have the strength to change something - so stupid and hackneyed that in times when you can't wake up in the morning without anxiously opening the news and seeing who has killed someone where again, it may sound. That we live your shopping list is your ballot setting with every fiber of our busy and multitasking bombarded attention.
Our new Biedermeier is not apolitical. We are attentive, we want to change something. And we want to do it by starting small and getting it to where it is easiest and fastest - stunned, as we usually walk through the neighborhood: to ourselves.
We need activism, that's right. We need the sounds, we need to learn to scream again, to go out onto the streets and show, to demand, to roar. We must not allow the peace sign to be a funny, cosmopolitan T-shirt imprint.
But what we are doing right now, quietly observing, recalibrating, becoming autonomous from the mass capitalism society, which can no longer function in this form for long without there being a disaster (or rather: the disasters are already swinging their hats on the mat) - this is also a form of becoming active. In the small, the individual.
In the regional seasonal. In the unpackaged loadable. In the green electricity consumer. In the sorting out. In the cress on the windowsill puller. In the Solidarity Agriculture Supporting and Vegetable Box Subscriber. In jute bag carrier. In plastic refusing. In the meat and/or animal products dispenser.
In becoming aware of what we are supposed to be and who we want to be, we get an idea of what is actually important in life. And we have the insight, the strength and the time to work for far-reaching sustainable decisions, for refugees, for the politics that have become so dubious, for the maintenance of the values with which we grew up and which we take for granted in ungrateful childlike manner.
We must start with ourselves if we want to change the world.