Выкладываю здесь свою англоязычную рецензию на книгу немецкого журналиста и публициста Михаэля Наста "Generation Beziehungsunfähig" ("Поколение неспособных к отношениям").
About Michael Nast’s book “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” (Generation Incapable of a Relationship).
Many are totally mislead by the title of the book, just the way I myself was, expecting the whole of this essay collection to be concerned with relationships in their romantic-sexual dimension. But that’s not the case. Probably the most suitable commentary on the title is to be found in the text itself, as Nast uses the title-formula to describe the state of a modern person in relation to THEMSELVES: not being related to your actual essence, not being connected to what you really are. The categorical behavioral imperative we grow up with tells us to be a successful salesman of your own self: this is supposed to secure an endless expansion and improvement of your consumption patterns and thus to make you happy. Consuming more material things, more pleasures, consuming more people around you. We are producing our public image through social networks, we make career, we “accomplish” something which make our market price grow; we constantly prove that we “can”. These are the outmost priorities.
Questioning the described system, Nast asserts, as it’s easy to guess, that actually no one becomes happy that way. For me as an ex-historian, the first thing to come to mind while reading the socio-cultural critics of this kind is: “No society has ever been happy and no one we’ll ever be. Come on.” Studying history has the ambiguous side effect of turning one into quite a fatalist; the only thing you observe everywhere is the inevitable historical process. Maybe it’s even pretty much the case; still the second thing to come to my mind is: be as it may in respect to the misery on the wider scale, there have always been individuals to be happy, that’s a fact. I’d even dare suppose that the particular way in which a society is miserable does represent an element of the above mentioned historical process, prone to considerable variations. However, the constituent parts of happiness are rather constant, and I believe it’s exactly these constants that Nast’s book actually tries to remind us about.
So what does it mean to be happy as an individual person? A nice topic for a preacher, isn’t it. Still Michael Nast manages to reflect on it without lapsing into too much preaching. I’d say that his book is a kind of a useful check-list to confront one’s own conscience with and thus maybe achieve some progress in the deconstruction of one’s own value system and priorities.
I don’t want to get into discussing the style and the literal qualities of the book: We are not dealing with belles lettres in this case, it’s just social journalism and social critics, and for God’s sake, it is neither completely tasteless nor totally banal. The most important thing is that Nast develops his argument in a persuasive, graphic, convincing, condensed way, giving you a pleasant and refreshing feeling of being a bit sick of yourself after you’ve finished reading.
I can assure you I consider myself a non-conformist personality with an alternative life attitude, self-reflected to such a degree that it almost drives me mad; I meditate, I understand a bunch about psychology and tend to through unsuitable parts of my life straight out of the window after some profound critical analysis; I eagerly preach about the narrow-mindedness of the majority of the population and the unhappiness it drives them into all the time. That’s also the public reputation I enjoy. But Nast’s book still left me sick, sick of myself, my attitudes, consumer attitudes, the way I act, the way I treat other people.
So many of us pretend to be alternative in the big life frame, staying at the same time so weak and conventional while meeting their particular decisions. That’s how Nast proves right: generation incapable of a relationship with your actual self, incapable of a relationship with people around you. Incapable of friendship, incapable of connection, incapable of devotion, incapable of suffering and sacrificing for each other. Incapable of love. Incapable of being happy. Logically.
(I am getting pathetic, I really do. No mercy for the naïve folks like me in our post-modernist times, amen!)
We are producing and selling ourselves all the time, to consume the others and then throw them away as an outdated iPhone, that’s just it. And that’s exactly the way they through us away too if we are not quick enough to be the first one, the stronger one.
_________________________________________________
“…Das eigene „Ich“ ist unser großes Projekt, die Arbeit ist da ja nur ein Detail. Wir sind mit uns selbst beschäftigt. Wir werden zu unserer eigenen Marke. Die Frage, was unsere Individualität am treffendsten versinnbildlicht, beschäftigt uns wie keine Generation zuvor. Wir modellieren unser Leben. Wir arbeiten an unserer Karriere, an unserer Figur, und daran, unseren Traumpartner zu finden, als wäre unser Leben ein Katalogentwurf, dem wir gerecht werden wollen. Man entscheidet sich bewusst für Dinge, mit denen man sich einen angemessenen Rahmen für sein Leben zusammenstellt, die richtige Fassung gewissermaßen. Jedes Detail wird zum Statement, das unser Ich unterstreichen soll: Mode, Musikrichtungen oder Städte, in die man zieht, Magazine, wie man sich ernährt – und in letzter Konsequenz auch die Menschen, mit denen man sich umgibt.”
(from the last but one chapter of the book, earlier published as an article here: http://imgegenteil.de/blog/generation-beziehungsunfaehig/)
_________________________________________________
Further reading:
“Réussir son hypermodernité et sauver le reste de sa vie en 25 étapes faciles“ (a Franco-Canadian perspective on in many respects the same socio-cultural phenomena as described by Nast; German translation “Die enthemmte Moderne meistern und den Rest seines Lebens Retten in 25 einfachen Schritten: Ratgeber-Roman”)
Further Listening:
German singer Gisbert zu Knyphausen
_________________________________________________
[Michael Nast’s “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” is available on Amazon-Audible for free by application for a test month.]
_________________________________________________
Сопровождение:
Gisbert zu Knyphausen, Wer kann sich schon entscheiden(Cowboy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDuD87QJPzo
Gisbert zu Knyphausen, So seltsam durch die Nacht
https://youtu.be/yh0b8eL2k0w
About Michael Nast’s book “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” (Generation Incapable of a Relationship).
Many are totally mislead by the title of the book, just the way I myself was, expecting the whole of this essay collection to be concerned with relationships in their romantic-sexual dimension. But that’s not the case. Probably the most suitable commentary on the title is to be found in the text itself, as Nast uses the title-formula to describe the state of a modern person in relation to THEMSELVES: not being related to your actual essence, not being connected to what you really are. The categorical behavioral imperative we grow up with tells us to be a successful salesman of your own self: this is supposed to secure an endless expansion and improvement of your consumption patterns and thus to make you happy. Consuming more material things, more pleasures, consuming more people around you. We are producing our public image through social networks, we make career, we “accomplish” something which make our market price grow; we constantly prove that we “can”. These are the outmost priorities.
Questioning the described system, Nast asserts, as it’s easy to guess, that actually no one becomes happy that way. For me as an ex-historian, the first thing to come to mind while reading the socio-cultural critics of this kind is: “No society has ever been happy and no one we’ll ever be. Come on.” Studying history has the ambiguous side effect of turning one into quite a fatalist; the only thing you observe everywhere is the inevitable historical process. Maybe it’s even pretty much the case; still the second thing to come to my mind is: be as it may in respect to the misery on the wider scale, there have always been individuals to be happy, that’s a fact. I’d even dare suppose that the particular way in which a society is miserable does represent an element of the above mentioned historical process, prone to considerable variations. However, the constituent parts of happiness are rather constant, and I believe it’s exactly these constants that Nast’s book actually tries to remind us about.
So what does it mean to be happy as an individual person? A nice topic for a preacher, isn’t it. Still Michael Nast manages to reflect on it without lapsing into too much preaching. I’d say that his book is a kind of a useful check-list to confront one’s own conscience with and thus maybe achieve some progress in the deconstruction of one’s own value system and priorities.
I don’t want to get into discussing the style and the literal qualities of the book: We are not dealing with belles lettres in this case, it’s just social journalism and social critics, and for God’s sake, it is neither completely tasteless nor totally banal. The most important thing is that Nast develops his argument in a persuasive, graphic, convincing, condensed way, giving you a pleasant and refreshing feeling of being a bit sick of yourself after you’ve finished reading.
I can assure you I consider myself a non-conformist personality with an alternative life attitude, self-reflected to such a degree that it almost drives me mad; I meditate, I understand a bunch about psychology and tend to through unsuitable parts of my life straight out of the window after some profound critical analysis; I eagerly preach about the narrow-mindedness of the majority of the population and the unhappiness it drives them into all the time. That’s also the public reputation I enjoy. But Nast’s book still left me sick, sick of myself, my attitudes, consumer attitudes, the way I act, the way I treat other people.
So many of us pretend to be alternative in the big life frame, staying at the same time so weak and conventional while meeting their particular decisions. That’s how Nast proves right: generation incapable of a relationship with your actual self, incapable of a relationship with people around you. Incapable of friendship, incapable of connection, incapable of devotion, incapable of suffering and sacrificing for each other. Incapable of love. Incapable of being happy. Logically.
(I am getting pathetic, I really do. No mercy for the naïve folks like me in our post-modernist times, amen!)
We are producing and selling ourselves all the time, to consume the others and then throw them away as an outdated iPhone, that’s just it. And that’s exactly the way they through us away too if we are not quick enough to be the first one, the stronger one.
_________________________________________________
“…Das eigene „Ich“ ist unser großes Projekt, die Arbeit ist da ja nur ein Detail. Wir sind mit uns selbst beschäftigt. Wir werden zu unserer eigenen Marke. Die Frage, was unsere Individualität am treffendsten versinnbildlicht, beschäftigt uns wie keine Generation zuvor. Wir modellieren unser Leben. Wir arbeiten an unserer Karriere, an unserer Figur, und daran, unseren Traumpartner zu finden, als wäre unser Leben ein Katalogentwurf, dem wir gerecht werden wollen. Man entscheidet sich bewusst für Dinge, mit denen man sich einen angemessenen Rahmen für sein Leben zusammenstellt, die richtige Fassung gewissermaßen. Jedes Detail wird zum Statement, das unser Ich unterstreichen soll: Mode, Musikrichtungen oder Städte, in die man zieht, Magazine, wie man sich ernährt – und in letzter Konsequenz auch die Menschen, mit denen man sich umgibt.”
(from the last but one chapter of the book, earlier published as an article here: http://imgegenteil.de/blog/generation-beziehungsunfaehig/)
_________________________________________________
Further reading:
“Réussir son hypermodernité et sauver le reste de sa vie en 25 étapes faciles“ (a Franco-Canadian perspective on in many respects the same socio-cultural phenomena as described by Nast; German translation “Die enthemmte Moderne meistern und den Rest seines Lebens Retten in 25 einfachen Schritten: Ratgeber-Roman”)
Further Listening:
German singer Gisbert zu Knyphausen
_________________________________________________
[Michael Nast’s “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” is available on Amazon-Audible for free by application for a test month.]
_________________________________________________
Сопровождение:
Gisbert zu Knyphausen, Wer kann sich schon entscheiden(Cowboy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDuD87QJPzo
Gisbert zu Knyphausen, So seltsam durch die Nacht
https://youtu.be/yh0b8eL2k0w
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