The Philosopher’s Attic

What do we actually aim for?

In life, in work, in our inspirations, our… end products? Our interactions, our contacts, our friendships, our helping and our longing?

Depending on your occupation, your passions or your likings the answer to everyone of those parts of a question can be varied and different… and ultimately meaningless to anybody else than yourself.

Of course we convince ourselves that this is not a basic truth and that whatever we’re doing ultimately holds some kind of sense, use or meaning for people around us, society or the greater good. Sand in your eyes, my friends…

This becomes a most apparently fact when whatever you are doing and whatever sense you convey upon it, is not met, acknowledged or even picked up upon by the people you aimed it at in the first place.

I’d have some problems to call myself a poet or even a writer (even a philosopher for that matter) outside of any reference of convenience for the action that I am doing at the moment. It’s linked to the conflictual relation I entertain with my passions and whatever I create. For reasons of simplicity however, let’s say I’m a poet.

As such I aim at people’s emotions. Like, dislike, love, hate, accept, concurring, disagreeing etc. are all emotions I try to bring up. The picture of the reader’s soul as a violin on which you try to strike the right cord or at least a certain cord springs to mind.

From that follows as a matter of logic that if if I don’t manage to strike that cord, I failed the ultimate goal. If poetry cannot bring out emotion big or small, then it’s lukewarm, dispassionate… and in the end meaningless.

It’s the worst thing that can happen to anything artistic is being met with indifference.

For the poet or the writer, the actor or the painter, it’s the end of all things.

In the end, when all is said and done, and if we are not lying in our own pocket, then it shouldn’t matter. If we are right in stating that ultimately we do it for art’s purpose, for some hgiher meaning, then the appreciation of anybody around us should not matter one single second.

And yet it does, doesn’t it?

Appreciation or at least reaction is just one of those things the human being depends on. Not because we’re weak, or fishing for compliments to bolster our own being.
But because we’re ultimately social beings. A reaction to you and your being and the things you put out there, is a way of simply stating ‘I see you and hear you’, add to that the ‘I don’t agree’ or the ‘I love it’ and there you have the whole spectrum of human interaction. It’s part of who we are.

So let’s stop kidding ourselves and simply confess that the reaction does matter.

If there is no reaction to be had, the world would be governed by silence.

Rwanda - but a name. Foreign, far off and yet it should be so close to our heart.

There are no words to express, no words to describe.

It’s not the horrors of a foreign country that should humble us. Nor the thousands of dead.

But our own ignorance, disillusionment and disregard.

14 years for uncountable souls tortured, lives lost and lies of a universal brotherhood of Nations exposed.

Our Western silence and forgetfulness kills again today. The memory of the dead innocent.

NB: I find it absolutely unbelievable that French or German media can’t seem to be bothered to issue more than one article on the 14 year commemoration of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It leaves me angry and speechless. English speaking media seem to pick it up a bit more.

In a decade or maybe even a century where women have finally reached a place in society where they no longer are simply associated to their husbands’ name, someone is trying to win a vote, by doing just that.

For a long while in our world, spouses used to have no name of their own. Women all over the western world were just, Misses John Smith. Not Misses Alina Smith-Johnson. There are places in the world, where it still is considered the peak of knowing your place if you introduce yourself like this. (For instance France has still a complete nomenclatural system in place for wife of high placed functionaries and dignitaries. Wife of a General? It’s the Madame le General. Wife of an Ambassador? Madame l’Ambassadeur. Only if she is the Amassador is she now called Madame l’Ambassadrice. A change I have witnessed and thus is no older than 15 years.)
Of course - we are tempted to say to day - in these times, the name association was only an exterior sign of worse condescending of women and wives behind strong and influential names.

How odd that the first woman to run in a race for the US presidency uses exactly the same techniques without blushing to further her chances at sticking the POTUS pin on her lapel.
Mrs. Bill Clinton, who could have had all the sympathies of feminist movements of all colours all over the globe, finds nothing demeaning in the way she associates herself with the accomplishments of her husband’s administration. “Of course, behind every big man stands a strong woman” they say. And I am sure that during all the Lady’s programs she must have done when accompanying her husband on an official visit abroad, must have taught her how to do international or global politics.
And I am sure that when the pundits explain why she won Florida (“Well, voters are afraid of the impending recession and they feel that Clinton had a good way of balancing the economy, so they voted for her.”), she only finds it natural to use her husbands work for her means. It’s a line of thought she seems to be encouraging these last few weeks.

I can only wonder how low this woman is ready to sink in order to get this job. But what is worse, is the voters eating up the idiocies she serves them out of her hand. What woman that really respects themselves, would use the image of the husband that had one affair after the other and had been publicly exposed to further her own career? What woman that values their own sex and the advancements that have been made in the name of equality of the sexes in all aspects of society, uses the well seated name of their husband for their own power lust?

And the most evident question. What woman - if, how she claims she has made her peace with her husband’s escapades - uses his accomplishments over two legislatures as their own?

Wait. That is the best image of emasculation that I have ever seen. It’s a public castration.

And with that she managed a catch 22 of major proportions.

On one hand she uses her husband’s work for her own means instead of showing of her own successes (probably because there are none) and on the other she manages to behave as a strong feminist by publicly relegating her husband Bill to the rank of pure puppet for her means.

Lady Macbeth anybody…?

Twenty years of squatting in the city center of Geneva have been ended by a police ‘eviction’, but the general housing problems remain.

The city and the Police of Geneva cleared the oldest squat of the city. After almost twenty years of illegal use two properties on the Boulevard des Philosophes, the RHINO (”Retour des Habitants dans les Immeubles Non-Occupés” = Return of the residents into non-occupied houses) is no more. Geneva police started evicting to squat yesterday afternoon and all seemed to go well, until 6 pm. That’s when the riots started, the tear gas was launched and trash bins were burnt. The indignation of the people living in Rhino and the sympathiser that the city and the police started the eviction although a court hearing as to the status of the occupation (do the 20 years of occupation create a situation of tacit contract of rent or not?) still has not been decided and declared that it was only a matter of identity control. An identity control that excluded the pregnant women and the children. Everyone else was taken to the police station. Either way you phrase it, it was an eviction. Or don’t pregnant women need to have their identity ascertained?

While I am in no way hot for puerile anarchism, pot-induced socialist fantasies of a fairer world or the ‘free’ sub-cultural phenomenon of such places (cf. Rhino housed an independent cinema, a bar, restaurant and a concert stage), the squats in Geneva served a purpose.

Last year at the beginning of term, the University of Geneva announced that only 16% of all new students that were to begin their studies at the University would be lodged with the help of the University and the city. The remaining 84% would have to work something out on their own. The possible opportunities in Geneva are the following: shared housing, living outside of the city (Lausanne, France etc.) or live in a squat until you find an apartment.
In a city where your kitchen counts as a liveable room and where you easily pay 1000 SFR. for a dump simply because it’s a 3 room apartment (where the kitchen counts as a full room!), where the xenophobia of the natives is so harsh (if you’re a Swiss German you won’t get a place to stay easily, even if you advance one year of the rent) and where the living cost is as high as I’ve experienced it in Paris, RHINO had a purpose. And it had it’s fans. Over time Rhino had become the contrasting center of an otherwise posh, money-oriented city that sometimes does more to accommodate tourists and oil-rich investors from Russia and Arab countries than take steps towards a better integration of emigrants, and lesser fortunate citizens.
As a squat with a year long history, Rhino was favoured by a lot of people, city councils and artists alike. And Rhino served a vital function within the fragile situation of this city.

It allowed students to crash for a while starting their new university courses and looking for an apartment of their own with the help of the city and the university. I’ve rarely heard of people staying longer than a few months, a year at the most. The reason for this is simple: living with a communal bath and a communal kitchen with 5 to 10 people in a single flat, having to deal with the self proclaimed leaders of the squat that although sporting every platitude a “Anarchism for Dummies” could offer, relished in their own little power while other people (the tax payer) worked to pay for the electricity and the water the squats of the city (Rhino was an exception, since the squatters had a running contract for payment of charges for electricity and water, this is in contrast with the Squat de la Tour for instance) consumed illegally.

But Rhino had a reason here in Geneva. Even if it was to force the city and the surrounding communities to rethink their housing plans and constructions of new housing. It’s probably something that will never happen. And the announcement of the city to build several new housing complexes does nothing to settle my mind. 50% of these new apartments are luxury flats and won’t do anything to help young adults, young families or students with their eternal quest for a decent place to live here in the International Metropole Geneva. Capital of the UN and the Humanitarian Movement.

The joke would be full of sarcasm, if it wasn’t the sad truth.

Links:
Taux de vacance des logements à Genève : 0,19 % au 1 juin 2005
Nouveaux plans de logements à Genève
News Clipping (in English)
News Clipping Tribune de Geneve (in English)

There is justice in the world, or so at least we hope…

… and whenever someone uninformed writes about something they have absolutely no clue of, they’re struck down by the wrath of God, visited by the Holy Inquisition, the Death Eaters or the Knights of Ni or at least they’re struck by lightening.

Not quite.

But almost…

Symbols have a huge meaning in our world. Most of our communication works on the basis of images and symbols. On the first look it has become so obvious to us that we might not even be aware of it, but symbols contribute a lot on how we shape our world view and on how we construct our reality. Symbolic acts can bring a nation together or destroy an opponent. But will a symbol be enough to awaken the worlds mind to one of the worst humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the modern world?

One of the best known symbols of the city of Geneva is the “Jet d’eau” a water fountain in the Lake Geneva that raises up to 140 meters into the air. As far as symbols go this is not anything of historical value. Even if the fountain has been operational since the 1890ies - which is slightly surprising - there is no mythology (think of the fountains of Versailles), no historical grand gesture (think of the train in the forest of Compiègne) to warrant such a symbol, no even an eminent death (think of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria). The “Jet d’Eau” was at its beginning a simple valve that was used to balance the system of the nearby power generator. But it somehow stuck with the city of Geneva and the lake which has a huge importance here.

Tonight however, this symbol will unite with another huge symbol here: the UN. As the ‘capital’ of the humanitarian movement, as the legal siege of the UN and all it’s humanitarian bureaus, the city of Geneva will illuminate its chief symbol - the Jet d’eau - tonight in blood red in order to waken people’s sensibility for the drama that is still being ignored: Darfur.

Like the first of the Makot Mitzrayim or the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the fountain of Geneva will seem as if it had turned into blood. The blood of over 200′000 people dead and over 2 Million cast away in abominable refugee camps in a lawless and ignored region.
The Jet d’eau, an icon made of water takes thus another meaning. That of one of the main reasons behind this one-sided conflict: water. Thus our lake, the Lake of Geneva, takes on the reason, meaning and the unnumbered voiceless cries of the victims of Darfur.

The icon of the water can be seen for miles around. And with the “Fête de Genève” around the corner, where the city attracts a lot of foreign guests, maybe there are people that will be touched this symbol. Maybe it will help us to ask some of the necessary questions that we dared not to ask up till now: Why have we let this crisis unfold unstopped for 3 years already? How can we all sing to the Life Earth tune, but will not raise our voices for those over 2 Million refugees that cannot? How many more corpses and displaced (Official Sudanese Speak for Darfur Refugees) people will it take for the West, the NATO and the UN to take real, military and humanitarian action?

The TRIAL Association here in Geneva has made a strong start with a strong symbol. And we all need to do our bit that this start will not simply stay symbolic.

Some things do not warrant a discursive answer where we should weigh all the points according to their validity. Sometimes there is no place for argument and earnest dialogue. This is especially true for things and “free opinions”⁽¹⁾ that have only one true goal: insult and belittlement.

Sometimes the only way to reason with malevolent content leads to satire. And satire is what they shall get:

Copyright Notice: I made this picture to show a point. If you want to use it in order to make your own statement, you are free to do so as long as a link points back to this original post. The original picture retains my copyright however and the picture may not be altered otherwise. Thank you.

1. How free is our speech really? Or would anyone have dared to put the ‘Explicit content’ sticker on the Q’ran? [back]