| Whatever we do, we always do it for someone
else. This is at the heart of our human identity. If it were not for someone
else, we never would do anything. We just would sit around in total agony.
Millions of people sit around in total agony day for day. We house them,
we nourish them, we care for their health (their physical health), and we
let them keep doing nothing.
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| No one is able to motivate him- / herself
out of nothing. We always need a reason. Children are motivated by their
parents, lovers by their beloved ones, parents by their children. There
is no way around it. Kaspar Hauser was sitting all day long in his stable-like
hide-out, nodding his head in stereotypies. When I imagine this scene,
I'm close to breaking out in tears.
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| For whom are you doing what you are doing
all day long? If you think about it honestly, you will find someone you would
like to impress, and if it was a secretly adored actor or actress you
will never know personally. Sometimes we do what we do, for love we will
never get, and we keep on as long as we do not realize the vanity of our
dreams and desires.
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| But once we understand that we will never
reach the applause that we are longing for, we may give up. People may stop
doing things for others. And some of them may even discover a new source
of satisfaction: directing their disappointed mental energies not towards,
but against their fellow-men. They may even find it attractive to
bomb themselves in the middle of a crowd of innocents, unknown to them.
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| When recently these blurred video snapshots
went through the media of 4 young men that had just survived from trying
to blow themselves up in the London underground, I didn't believe my eyes:
This tall razor-head boy running for his life - dark sweater, wide trousers,
Nike-shoes - he looked exactly like my younger son! And although I knew
he's not been to London recently (or was he?!), I got alarmed. And suddenly
I had a feeling that the shocked residents of London would probably have
difficulties to understand: A feeling of relief that this young man did
get away and saved his life. Maybe he survived to wake up from a nightmare
to discover that he would like to make more of his life.
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| Maybe it would be a convenient way to
de-escalate the tense atmosphere: After each suicide bomb attack, we usually
deplore the innocent victims, but the sinister fate of the bombers themselves
is of minor interest. Shouldn't we ask more precisely why young men and
women feel pressed to end their lives in such a spectacular way? Such
a fatal decision seldom results from circumstantial reasons. I wouldn't
give up my life for nothing. If anybody has decided to do that, he/she
must have serious arguments. We should learn more about these arguments.
And we should try to give these desperate people more reasons to live than
to die for.
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