Moblog

Historiker, Politologen, Ökonomen und Angehörige weiterer Disziplinen schreiben in diesem Werk zu zentralen Aspekten der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik und geben Ausblicke auf die Zukunftsfähigkeit des seit 1990 wiedervereinigten Deutschlands.

Moncure Conway, in whose honour we are assembled to-day, devoted his life to two great objects: freedom of thought and freedom of the individual. In regard to both these objects, something has been gained since his time, but something also has been lost. New dangers, somewhat different in form from those of past ages, threaten both kinds of freedom, and unless a vigorous and vigilant public opinion can be aroused in defence of them, there will be much less of both a hundred years hence than there is now. My purpose in this address is to emphasize the new dangers and to consider how they can be met.

Let us begin by trying to be clear as to what we mean by "free thought." This expression has two senses. In its narrower sense it means thought which does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion. In this sense a man is a "free thinker" if he is not a Christian or a Mussulman or a Buddhist or a Shintoist or a member of any of the other bodies of men who accept some inherited orthodoxy. In Christian countries a man is called a " free thinker " if he does not decidedly believe in God, though this would not suffice to make a man a "free thinker" in a Buddhist country.

I do not wish to minimize the importance of free thought in this sense. (...) But there is also a wider sense of "free thought," which I regard as of still greater importance. Indeed, the harm done by traditional religions seems chiefly traceable to the fact that they have prevented free thought in this wider sense. The wider sense is not so easy to define as the narrower, and it will be well to spend some little time in trying to arrive at its essence.

When we speak of anything as "free," our meaning is not definite unless we can say what it is free from. Whatever or whoever is "free" is not subject to some external compulsion, and to be precise we ought to say what this kind of compulsion is. Thus thought is "free" when it is free from certain kinds of outward control which are often present. Some of these kinds of control which must be absent if thought is to be "free" are obvious, but others are more subtle and elusive.

To begin with the most obvious. Thought is not "free" when legal penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain opinions, or by giving expression to one's belief or lack of belief on certain matters. Very few countries in the world have as yet even this elementary kind of freedom. In England, under the Blasphemy Laws, it is illegal to express disbelief in the Christian religion, though in practice the law is not set in motion against the well-to-do. It is also illegal to teach what Christ taught on the subject of non-resistance. Therefore, whoever wishes to avoid becoming a criminal must profess to agree with Christ's teaching, but must avoid saying what that teaching was. In America no one can enter the country without first solemnly declaring that he disbelieves in anarchism and polygamy ; and, once inside, he must also disbelieve in communism. In Japan it is illegal to express disbelief in the divinity of the Mikado. It will thus be seen that a voyage round the world is a perilous adventure. A Mohammedan, a Tolstoyan, a Bolshevik, or a Christian cannot undertake it without at some point becoming a criminal, or holding his tongue about what he considers important truths. This, of course, applies only to steerage passengers ; saloon passengers are allowed to believe whatever they please, provided they avoid offensive obtrusiveness.

It is clear that the most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. No great country has yet reached to this level, although most of them think they have. The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so monstrous and immoral that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to them.

Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thought. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a con- troversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. Both these obstacles exist in every large country known to me, except China, which is the last refuge of freedom. It is these obstacles with which I shall be concerned - their present magnitude, the likelihood of their increase, and the possibility of their diminution.

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticizing, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort of thought and will which is necessary to place themselves among the more fortunate members of the community ; but very few among these are seriously concerned to secure for all the advantages which they seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional men who have that kind of love towards mankind at large that makes them unable to endure patiently the general mass of evil and suffering, regardless of any relation it may have to their own lives. These few, driven by sympathetic pain, will seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape, some new system of society by which life may become richer, more full of joy and less full of preventable evils than it is at present. But in the past such men have, as a rule, failed to interest the very victims of the injustices which they wished to remedy. The more unfortunate sections of the population have been ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and weariness, timorous through the imminent danger of immediate punishment by the holders of power, and morally unreliable owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation. To create among such classes any conscious, deliberate effort after general ameliora- tion might have seemed a hopeless task, and indeed in the past it has generally proved so. But the modern world, by the increase of education and the rise in the standard of comfort among wage-earners, has produced new conditions, more favourable than ever before to the demand for radical reconstruction.

"Wenn die Täter krank sind – und man hat Grund daran festzuhalten –, so sind sie nicht kränker als die Gesellschaft, in der sie (und wir) leben."

"Da bin ich mir nicht so sicher", meinte Maneck. "Wäre es nicht besser, ehrlich zu reagieren, anstatt seine Gefühle zu verstecken? Vielleicht, wenn jeder im Land wütend oder verärgert wäre, könnte das die Dinge so verändern, daß die Politiker gezwungen wären, sich ordentlich zu benehmen."
Die Augen des Mannes leuchteten auf, als sich die Gelegenheit zu einem Streitgespräch bot. "Theoretisch schon, da würde ich Ihnen zustimmen. Aber in der Praxis könnte es zu noch größeren Katastrophen führen. Versuchen Sie sich doch mal sechshundert Millionen wütender, heulender, schluchzender Menschen vorzustellen. Jeder im ganzen Land - einschließlich Flugzeugpiloten, Lokführer, Bus- und Straßenbahnfahrer, die alle die Beherrschung verlieren. Was für eine Katastrophe! Flugzeuge würden vom Himmel fallen, Züge würden entgleisen, Schiffe sinken, Busse und Lastwagen und Autos würden zusammenstoßen. Chaos. Vollständiges Chaos."
Er hielt inne, um Maneck Gelegenheit zu geben, sich die Details der Anarchie, die er gerade entfesselt hatte, auszumalen. "Und bitte denken Sie auch daran: Wissenschaftler haben die Auswirkungen von Massenhysterie und Massensuizid auf die Umwelt noch nicht erforscht. Nicht in diesem subkontinentalen Maßstab. Wenn der Flügelschlag eines Schmetterlings um den halben Globus herum atmosphärische Störungen verursachen kann, wer weiß, was in unserem Fall passieren könnte? Stürme? Wirbelstürme? Flutwellen? Und die Landmasse, würde sie vor Empathie beben? Würden die Berge explodieren? Und die Flüsse, würden sie durch die Tränen aus zwölfhundert Millionen Augen ansteigen und über die Ufer treten?"
Er nahm einen weiteren Schluck aus der grünen Flasche. "Nein, das ist zu gefährlich. Lieber so weitermachen wie bisher." (S. 331)

Endlich sind sie da, die neuen Stories vom "fröhlichsten Neurotiker unserer Zeit"! Mit Filmen wie Annie Hall und Manhattan wurde Woody Allen zu dem Portraitisten New Yorks und seiner Bewohner. Wer glaubt, Allens Texte seien lediglich Nebenprodukte, der irrt. Wieder erweist sich der große Regisseur als Meister der Worte. Seine Phantasie ist ein Wirbelsturm, der die ganze Welt in sich hereinsaugt und wieder ausspuckt: als groteske Schaubude, als Slapstick und Farce. Fünfundzwanzig Jahre ist nichts von ihm erschienen, nun ist der begnadete Erzähler Woody Allen zurück.

Ich erwähnte den Aminatapilz, der spurlos töten kann, doch Sam verwarf diese Möglichkeit. "Es gab nur einen Bioladen, der wirklich todbringende Pilze angeboten hat, aber der hat vor Jahren dichtgemacht, als rauskam, dass sie nicht aus ökologischem Anbau stammten."
Ich dankte Sam und rief Lou Watson an, der ganz aufgekratzt war, weil er am Tatort einen astreinen Satz Fingerabdrücke gesichert hatte, die er in einem anderen Bezirk prompt gegen ein paar seltene und ziemlich wertvolle Fingerabdrücke von Enrico Caruso hatte tauschen können. Lou sagte, das Labor habe ein Haar entdeckt. Und eine kahle Stelle. Das Haar führte dummerweise zu einem achtjährigen Kind, und die Kahlstelle ließ sich neun Männern in der ersten Reihe einer Stripshow zuordnen, die alle über ein wasserdichtes Alibi verfügten.
Im Präsidium redete ich ein paar Takte mit Ben Rogers, der mein Mentor ist und die Yuppie-Restaurant-Morde aufgeklärt hat, bei denen die Opfer erschossen und dann leicht mit Limone und frischer Minze bestreut wurden. Ben hatte gewartet, bis dem Mörder die frische Minze ausging und er auf gehackte Walnüsse ausweichen musste, die anhand ihrer Seriennummern zurückverfolgt werden konnten.
"Erzähl mir von den Opfern", sagte ich. "Hatten sie Feinde?"
"Klar hatten sie Feinde", sagte Ben, "aber ihre Feinde waren alle im Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. Da fand ein großer Feindkongreß statt, an dem so gut wie jeder Feind von der Ostküste teilnahm."