The reality of the MATRIX – and where is Neo?A plea for the Basic Law

Since appearance determines being,

being follows appearance.

Does anyone still remember MATRIX: the film with Keanu Reeves as Neo? Artificial intelligence has taken over the world, using humans for energy and keeping them in a simulation to control them. Only a few people – such as Morpheus and Trinity – still live in reality and are trying to free humanity. Neo – who, according to an oracle, is the chosen one who will defeat the Matrix – is trained by Morpheus and taught that in the illusory world of the Matrix, (physical) laws can be bent or even broken through sheer willpower.

Since the "turning point" at the latest, it has become impossible to ignore how Germany finds itself in a simulation. Almost overnight, long-developed programs were launched that geared the country toward a fight against Russia. Step by step, all inhibitions about wanting to bring Russia to its knees through sanctions and arms deliveries to Ukraine fell away. At the same time, a campaign of Russophobia and demagoguery unfolded, which has become the defining feature of media and political statements in Germany since the "turning point."

First, there were the sanctions packages that were fired from Brussels even before the first shot was fired in the "turning point," showing that the warheads had long been mounted in the sanctions silos and the missiles refueled, so that the countdown could be triggered at any time. At the same time, as in the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, there was carpet bombing. However, this was not about destroying water and energy supplies and other critical infrastructure from land, water, and air: No, the area bombing of this new type of war is carried out by media artillery in the imaginary space of the population with the aim of leaving behind a scorched, Russophobic, monocultural, dumbed-down earth in order to pave the way for sanctions and further measures triggered as a result. The concept of Network Centric Warfare 4.0 finds its way into the imaginary space, from where it affects the real space, and the war in Ukraine is a test bed for this new quality of networked operations, in which sanctions and the media act as the fifth and sixth branches of the armed forces: a test bed also for whose and what qualifications are still needed to overstretch China.The consequences of this political orientation—permanently rising energy costs, inflation, recession, accelerating deindustrialization and bankruptcies, impoverishment, exponential increases in military spending accompanied by parallel austerity measures in virtually all other areas, general militarization of society, diverse divisions within society—are only discussed subliminally and attributed to other causes. It is therefore not surprising that many people who are still able to perceive the realities – but are not necessarily experienced in dealing with them in a substantive way – are turning to the AfD, and there are currently good reasons to believe that it will emerge as the strongest force in one of the next elections. Instead of taking political failure as an opportunity to conduct more in-depth analyses, develop forward-looking, sustainable concepts, and abandon the paths they have taken, the established parties and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are responding to these developments with repression, blame, and insubstantial ideas, thereby reinforcing them. The primary focus is on constantly hammering home the anti-constitutional nature of the AfD and, as was already the case with the Querdenker movement during the pandemic, defaming any alternative thinking by associating it with the party.

I am very well aware of my responsibility in formulating this, I believe, and am otherwise interested in stimuli that reveal where my thinking is insufficient. But just as the Federal Republic of Germany is not a reactionary state because there are reactionary members of parliament in its parliaments, the AfD is not a reactionary, anti-constitutional party, albeit to a different degree: in both cases, assuming sufficient substance that these forces do not gain substantial power. There are two main reasons for viewing it this way.

Labeling the AfD as anti-constitutional is less the result of a comprehensive analysis of all parts and intentions of the party than the extraction of aspects serving its intentions – and observable in the AfD from the totality of the characteristics describing this party for the purpose of combating it less because of its danger to our free democratic basic order than rather to unsettle the electorate that is increasingly turning to it and, moreover, to conceal one's own failure to offer it a future perspective with which to bind it to oneself. This electorate, which now exceeds 30% in some regions, also makes it virtually impossible to defame the entire AfD as anti-constitutional, because this implicitly asserts either the immaturity of the citizens and/or their anti-constitutionality: mind you, of 20 to 30% of the total population – and primarily in the east at that. A dishonest debate also arises from the fact that, parallel to this discussion, we are giving a regime that despises humanity press coverage and possibly TAURUS cruise missiles, a regime that refers to Russians as "orcs" and, commenting on the death of Russian officers who were probably poisoned, says, "Our people say with a smile: 'Rats always need poison. The day begins with good news," and whose declared intention is the "detoxification" of Crimea and thus mass murder.

Another point comes into play, and for my thinking it is even more essential: how to secure a sustainable future for our country and its population. Having such a goal in mind and striving for ideas and concepts that serve it requires identifying the primary factors that can be used to describe a situation and provoke a development that serves it. In my aphorisms on the humanization of the ape, I have already addressed some fundamental aspects.

When I look beyond these considerations for other obstacles to sustainable development, I find that it is by no means the anti-constitutionalism of parts of the AfD, but rather the moral and ethical failure of the intellectual upper and middle classes of our country—which primarily occupy the social center ground ( ). This includes the political, media, and economic elite of our country—although it is particularly surprising that the latter accepts so uncomplainingly the destruction of the conditions that have so significantly contributed to its economic success in recent years . This may be because they see a player in the room before whom they feel they must bow down, and because they have maneuvered themselves into a position where they can rarely make decisions with confidence. This elite also includes the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which limits its work for the Basic Law to combating left-wing and right-wing anti-constitutionalism and ignores how this is fueled by failures that arise from the center.

From this perspective, the AfD is merely a consequence of this failure. In the dance around the golden calf and the beginning struggle for a place on the ark, all inhibitions are increasingly falling away in all areas of society—global, national, corporate, political, private—and self-interest is dominating over the common good. Silence, lack of respect, arbitrariness, censorship, fraud, and the characteristics of hatred, contempt for humanity, demagoguery, and obedience, which are intensified in the "turning point," are categories for something that cannot be viewed in a more differentiated way here and testify to the fact that in our society, cunning dominates (1, 2) – and suppresses – wisdom. The AfD is becoming a refuge for those who are left behind in this struggle, where the law of the strongest prevails, who can no longer bear this climate of hypocrisy, or who escape the simulation because another simulation has a stronger effect on them. When warnings are issued about the consequences of the AfD's rise for Germany as a business location, this obscures the fact that, although these social attitudes enable many people in Germany to live a good life alongside their rise to power – because they silently allow the establishment to do as it pleases or are its compliant cheerleaders and agitators – the attitudes mentioned are not conducive to creativity, the implementation of groundbreaking innovations, and general resilience against the challenges of our time.

Let us turn to the example of three contemporaries to look at another category that arises from an interplay of several factors such as repression, self-deception, and deception—perhaps it could be called denial of reality—and shows that Germany's political elite is part of this simulation away from reality. On August 10, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier began by paying tribute in a speech to the Constitutional Convention, which took place 75 years ago at Herrenchiemsee as a gathering of politicians, civil servants, and scientists, and whose result was a text that served as the basis for the Basic Law that came into force a year later.

The people should fight for the law as they fought for their wall.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 540–480 BC), pre-Socratic philosopher

It is helpful to begin with the end of the speech in order to understand its very limited meaning, because the Federal President expresses that the day of thanksgiving to the Constitutional Convention would be a day of self-commitment, which includes the memory of Herrenchiemsee and a "lasting chapter in German democratic history," and he wishes the expanded exhibition many visitors. With this classification of the Constitutional Convention in German remembrance culture, the efforts of that time degenerate into a beautiful story, in which it remains unclear whether the efforts of that time still have any significance today.

Words describe values.

Their weight is revealed through action.

So is the Federal President right, for example, when he says that "freedom, democracy, and the rule of law determine our coexistence" in our country and that the Basic Law is the foundation for this? Based on my now quite extensive personal experience, I cannot confirm this, and in particular I must say that the assumption that Germany is a constitutional state is a myth. The effectiveness of the Basic Law and the law is not guaranteed by cheap words on holidays and commemorative days, but by their permanent use in jurisprudence. However, in my perception, the law is not used in the various instances to clarify a matter and then evaluate it in accordance with our internally harmonious legal system, but is used very sparingly to legitimize a jurisprudence that can only be regarded as arbitrary in accordance with the law.

I gained the essential experience that allows me to make this claim through my dealings with various courts when I attempted to defend myself against fraud, coercion, violations of public morality, and the arbitrariness of the Magdeburg tax office. In Arbitrariness – Insights into German (UN) Jurisprudence, I have documented my experiences with the original pleadings. They provide extensive evidence of how judges, in the simulation of our democracy, habitually bend and break the Basic Law and the law, and legitimize each other, so that the normality of our law is permanently damaged by the normality of jurisprudence.

If the Federal President continues to believe that the democratic and legal structures and functions of the state should serve to protect freedom of expression, then one must call out to him: But they do not. The current efforts to pass a law against digital violence can serve as an example of this. In the opinion of the German Judges Association, its proposed design is also extremely impractical. I have now dealt with the issue at length in a letter to Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, another letter to members of the German Bundestag's Legal Affairs Committee, and an article in the NachDenkSeiten, striving for substance and practicability.

However, these efforts have not elicited any relevant response. When the Federal President points out

The Basic Law first refers to the human being itself – "Human dignity shall be inviolable" – and only in the second sentence to the state: to its obligation to respect and protect this dignity. In its brevity and conciseness, this is probably the clearest rejection of everything inhuman that had previously happened in and through the state.

it must be stated that those mentioned – and even he himself – are degrading my dignity and my efforts – in stark contrast to his efforts to emphasize "human dignity as the maxim of all state action." However, this reveals another aspect of permanent political debate to be an empty shell without any relevant value: civic engagement.

In particular, however, one contribution was not addressed, one that is lacking in the current draft bill but is of increasing importance: it does not address censorship. Since I joined TWITTER at the end of 2019 and have been commenting on a variety of social issues, I have had to deal with TWITTER massively restricting the distribution of my tweets, while at the same time prioritizing hateful and even perverse tweets. Every effort to take action against this extraterritorial jurisdiction without accusation, without charge, without the opportunity to comment, and even without judgment—against Twitter, the Federal Minister of Justice, the police, the public prosecutor's office – has so far been unsuccessful, so I must assume that the censorship is legitimized by politicians and even carried out on their behalf, thereby depriving Article 5 of the German Constitution of its value. At best, this approach can be seen as civilizational progress with view of the Nazi era, when violations of the "restrictions on radio reception" could result in the death penalty.

By no longer protecting "freedom of opinion and of the press," the "democratic and legal structures and functions of the state" are promoting destabilizing developments in Germany and becoming a threat to the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany. This makes the significance of what the fathers of the Basic Law achieved all the more clear—and they even thought about being able to deal with such developments. "Our Basic Law is a mighty fortress," one might exclaim, but there is no way around constantly striving to ensure its stability.

Also on August 10, there was an interview in DIE ZEIT in which Giovanni di Lorenzo patted Robert Habeck's narcissistic soul on the back and staged it so impressively that it was as if he had been called upon to preserve Robert Habeck's greatness for posterity: anointing with anointed words – and unforgettable images. It is these words and images that are used to keep people under control, analogous to the computer simulation in MATRIX: Don't worry, don't bother me – I'll take care of everything and do what's best for you.

Unchallenged, Giovanni di Lorenzo can recall a statement made five years ago, which must be regarded as a green postulate, considering that Annalena Baerbock also expressed that she did not care what her voters thought:

I don't really care what people think. The main thing is that we agree on political projects that unite us and with which we can take the future into our own hands. Thoughts are welcome to remain free.

But how can one live up to one's oath of office to "dedicate my strength to the welfare of the German people, to increase their benefit, and to ward off harm from them" if one does not care what the German people think? The agreement Robert Habeck refers to is limited, on the part of the voters, to a sufficient number of crosses on the ballot, as a result of which he can take on projects and the voters can bear the consequences. In exchange for giving him a free hand, they are allowed to think what they want – but he can do what he wants. In this sense, it is easier to understand when he goes on to say that he has no problem talking to AfD voters: they too are free to think what they want and say what they want to him – but he doesn't care. Considering that significant parts of his economic policy concept are determined by a network that includes AGORA Energiewende, which is financed to a considerable extent by American capital, it is legitimate to ask how free he himself is with his thoughts.

Symptomatic of the general political discussion in Germany on issues such as high energy prices, inflation, recession, accelerating deindustrialization, and the rising number of bankruptcies is the complete disregard for sanctions against Russia and the decoupling from its raw material supplies, with the result that these now have to be purchased much more expensively worldwide, creating dependency—not least on the US as the primary driver of the war in Ukraine. Ignoring responsibility for this even makes it possible to sell the subsequent political decisions as one's own success – although this requires ignoring the negative consequences of these decisions for the economy and the population.

We averted an energy crisis and a gas shortage last year, and energy prices are falling again. We were able to replace Russian gas.

It is therefore no surprise that when Germany is referred to as "the sick man of Europe," the reasons given are China's economic slowdown and dependence on Russian gas, which has "gone down the drain" – and, when asked, weaker domestic demand.

Annalena Baerbock (video accompanying the above quote) is in a similar situation to Robert Habeck, with a virtually unique conviction – that is, conviction, not persuasiveness – believes she can demand attitudes and actions from the whole world – such as declaring war on Russia, demanding that China respect human rights, showing no respect for Africa, demanding that India turn away from Russia, and bossing South Africa around – which the West has on its agenda but is itself failing to live up to. The fact that this usually makes them dogged and their smiles rarely seem natural may be because, despite their best efforts, a mirror in the simulation repeatedly reveals the truth about their impact on the world.

All three are part of the simulation and watch films that are detached from reality, but they also feed into it with their melodious yet empty words: they rob people of the strength to use their potential when confronting reality and weaken their ability to make their own substantial contributions to overcoming the challenges in our society. As in MATRIX, people are seen as objects to be kept calm through tittytainment rather than as creative subjects and the goal of all efforts. However, if we fail to resolve the paradigm paradox of democracy, to bind values such as truth, freedom, and respect in their natural form to the social order, but instead only want and are able to do justice to them in simulation—while in reality being the most aggressive social order since World War II, for which these values only have value through their connection to individual benefit, which not least with serious consequences, leads to a restriction of cognitive diversity – then the intrinsic value of democracy and its positive impact on the world, as well as the performance of Germany as a business location, can only be maintained in simulation, since the available human capital can only be activated to a limited extent and, on the contrary, is inhibited in its development.

Looking at all this, and much more, one can be overcome with despair in the effort to discover a Neo who can lead the people of Germany out of the simulation and manage to present reality to them not as an oppressive and burdensome gray everyday life, but as a challenge that can be fun to tackle and that makes it possible to significantly increase one's own abilities and from which one can benefit by being useful and in which it is not necessary to take advantage of others in order to gain advantages for oneself. Humanity becomes an existential orientation.

But how can we give new impetus to becoming human? First of all, it should be noted that Humanity is not a group of farm animals at the height of production, which may not provide milk or meat, but provide many other usable products and receive money instead of feed, and thus their feed – not locked up behind fences, but "protected" in virtual space or controlled by implants that then also penetrate into the imagined space – in order to give a small group of Homo sapiens the feeling of being the crown of creation and the absolute rulers of nature – including humanity. No, humanity is called upon to realize in the real world the level of development it has already achieved in the imagined space. Only in becoming human can the survival of the species – and with it, probably a large part of life – be realized.

The power of good unfolds

not through the means of evil.

...

If most of the work is immaterial mental work – i.e., takes place in the realm of thought – and, as a result, a lack of knowledge and negative (evil) behavior limit its effect, then the scarcities of the sixth Kondratieff are the virtues that are insufficiently anchored in society at large. They must unfold in a sufficiently helpful way in society. Just as a steam engine, a car, or even a computer consists of several parts, the basic innovation of the sixth Kondratieff must be a concept consisting of a number of individual projects with which the virtues already existing in the realm of thought are brought into the real world and anchored in such a way that they enable every individual in society to develop and have an impact along these lines. And so the opportunity for the West that is being discussed can also be expressed as follows: to combine the humanization of the ape with democracy and to provide the basic innovation of the sixth Kondratieff for this purpose. Not to lead the peoples like Moses into the Promised Land, but to motivate and empower them to penetrate deeper into the imagined space, , in order to act nobly, helpfully, and well in the real space from there, : to process impulses, search for ideas and alternatives, develop visions, question things, recognize connections, and engage with one's own thoughts and actions. With all the consequences for psychosocial health, climate protection, the easing of tensions in the world, dealing with technological progress, overcoming challenges such as the coronavirus pandemic, and much more.

The fascinating thing about the general

is the unfolding diversity of the concrete.

The simple answer to the question of what drives human development is then: through engagement with the values to which humanity is already committed, but which it still finds difficult to live by. However, it is not enough to give in to the illusion that this has already been achieved. Like those who originally brought us to our current level of development, today's generations must learn to engage with these issues. Confrontation is a prerequisite for evolution. Just as it was possible for early humans to gain a better overview of their surroundings by walking upright and freeing their hands for other tasks, today we need to walk upright in the realm of ideas in order to think and communicate in a more comprehensive way.

The assumption that someone could emerge from this who, through engaging with Martin Luther, has an idea of how reformatory efforts can trigger a social shift and who has also taken up the cause of #modernThinking, evaporates at the latest when one realizes (1, 2) that individual influences and an environment of egoists, ignoramuses, cheerleaders, and agitators set natural limits, and that being blocked on TWITTER is the least significant reaction.

I'll keep searching—but time is running out. And maybe Neo is a woman.

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