"The Uncontrollability of the World" A Conversation with Prof. Hartmut Rosa

The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the desire to make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world - only then do we feel touched, moved and alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world.
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Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, and Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt, Germany. His many books include Social Acceleration and Resonance.
Hartmut Rosa's books at Polity Press in English:
politybooks.com/author-books/...
Hartmut Rosa's book "Unverfügbarkeit" in German: www.residenzverlag.com/buch/u...

[@IgboKezie]

Absolutely Spitzenmassig Prof Hartmut Und Dr Johannes. I loved both the sociological & phenomenological implications of your discussion. It's great to see philosophical discourse leading to material solutions for those with ears to hear. Food for thought, grist for implementation.

[@emilthiels6256]

Hello, four years later its really relevant to hear this, wish you well Johannes and thank you!

[@kirstengarbini2819]

Rosa is brilliant - great interview thank you

[@JohannesNiederhauser]

Thank you!

[@matthiasstaber9216]

Great conversation, really really great!

[@freedommascot]

Such a great, great conversation. Thank you! I find the topic so very apropos. To Johanness, I’m grateful that your channel transcends the simplistic rants against capitalism that are prevalent elsewhere on KZbin. Capitalism, per se, is not the problem but rather it’s the way society is structured. I believe the great liberal expansion, which has been in progress for at least 70 years, has reached its apogee and is now starting to contract-to devolve. The new conservatism represents this turn towards inner values and the things individuals can control. It is my belief that the massively spread out and highly centralized structure of governance will be eventually contracting around the loci of the state, then the counties, then the communities where self-sufficiency, shared community engagement in the management of the community, and the augmentation of local feedback systems whereby nodes are connected to other nodes in a supply and demand fashion where one part supplies nourishment to another, etc., will be when this contraction attains its perigee. This resonance that your guest (and what a fine guest!) brings up is the type of electromagnetic relationship that’s specific to distance. Polarities and resonances of different kinds operate within the specific field of their range of motion, or action. Centralization has its wider field of action but is unable to incorporate the small. It’s the small that’s now calling out for our attention. We shouldn’t think of the small as being empty of meaning-there is more information contained in the small (the workings of the mind and its external connections) to satisfy us for a long, long, time.

[@freedommascot]

dwelch4learning Yes he does. It’s so interesting that we’ve got this strong collectivist movement on one hand, a conservative and individual rights movement on the other with the entrenched corporate elites trying to pass themselves off as part of the collective branch-what a crazy chaos! I get the attraction that an unconditional basic income might hold but when has anything free ever been respected, valued and appreciated? We’re already witness to the pervasive narcissistic entitlement that’s in place without it. I think one of our core problems is this lack of respect and appreciation for the very fact of existence itself and more coddling won’t help that. Everyone has to at least pull their own weight-this should always be the expectation.

[@adalbertthomalla4887]

Das Sein, das scheue Reh, hat sich tief im Gebirg versteckt.

[@marcovandenberg6719]

how hopeful we were, when corona made us stop and halt...How much of a back to the old we see now. Is there a rewrite in the book of modernity? Johannes, keep up the great work. We need more people like you in the public space.

[@gindphace]

This is becoming my favourite youtube channel!

[@JohannesNiederhauser]

Thank you very much indeed! I’m very glad to hear this

[@jaywalkerRed]

Fascinating discussion! I am almost shaking with resonance. Everyone who has any interest in a changing paradigm must listen to the whole of this spontaneous conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to create and distribute this living moment during COVID-19. We MUST recreate the world. We are not victims of the economy, we can shape our world to be more healthy and more just. Now I want to hear from the French philosopher Bruno Lator before he dies. Can the concept of Gaia be part of our paradigm shift to save the earth if not ourselves??

[@ObeySilence]

Geil mit Rosa!

[@freedommascot]

Johanness, I understand that you probably wish to avoid political controversy but how can you not reflect upon the disparities between collective values, such as unconditional basic income and nationalization of various services which give the State excessive power over its citizens, as compared to the conservative values that uphold the rights of individual citizens and on which America (and the West) was founded? If such collectivist policies worked, that is, if bureaucratic, centralized government was effective, efficient and intelligent, then that would be another matter, but it is not and never has been. Like any other system, it works to preserve the survival of itself at the expense of the not self-this is the way of nature. Should one day we all identify as the same one self then there’d be no such inside/outside dynamic but we don’t get there through any kind of abstract template that disincentivizes novelty and innovation.

[@ObeySilence]

This novelty bias and striving for so called innovation is exactly what keeps us from achieving resonance experiences I would say. Those goals are part of the dynamic of the Gestell. Some sort of Fortschrittsglauben/material Progressivism. How do you come to the conclusion that something like unconditional income for a citizen would go detrimental to the freedom of the individual? Also to assume that individualism would be something conservative is quite false, the more collectivistic a society, the more conservative they tend to be. The US to me is quite collectivist as people there are still quite controlled by their government through a very strong national ideology and orwellian misconceptions about freedom. The great masterpiece the few ruling people in the US achieved was really to create the worst living conditions in the whole West while selling it as freedom and individualism while in reality they are embedded in kind of a cybernetic Oligarchy. Don't get me wrong I am not saying it is as bad as China or Singapore but you guys are coming close. I just assume from the ideological content of what you are writing that you are from the US.

[@malstedligmle3390]

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

[@marcovandenberg6719]

Neoliberalism has a great track record: Every one is free to be hunted, and 0,5 % can join the ranks of the hunters. We rob nature of its ability to regenerate itself(until it wipes us out anyway), and how wonderfully dystopian these Braunkohle-craters in NRW look when we whizz past them in our gurgling SUV's... Boy, what a beautiful world the dogmas of Capitalism have given us . . . Man is selfish and rational, right? How much more ignorant can we remain? Neoliberalism should be buried for good, as a misconception on the nature of being. It creates robots in all that would be human potential. The first thing we should do is bring dignity back: for life in general, for cooperating and in competition as well. Every birth deserves a dignified life. This we should strive for. And to not make anyone a slave of a murderous economic machine is a dignified goal. Professor Rosa should be given leverage to implement his ideas.