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Konrad Lorenz: Comment Fighting As Ritual

 Illustration: Anne Geßner I often loved to walk on the green meadows, near the forest. Above all, however, I enjoyed the greatest natural spectacle of the mating season in the early morning hours. The ritual of the fight between two male deer when they become adults. Biologists call it comment fighting. With their antlers the big deers demonstrated their supremacy for the future offspring. There, hidden among the bushes and shrubs, I observed a fight between rivals that could continue for hours. When I saw them facing each other, I thought they might kill each other. Their antlers bumped into each other and produced a sound that was as unusal as it was familiar. At some point I had the idea to provoke the separation of the fighters by coming out of hiding. But soon I realised however, that the deer only measured their strength within a biological ritual. Until then I tought rituals are something cultural. But such a ritual was only an instinctive behaviour of species. After watchi
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VORTEXES: REALITY OR FICTION?

  Illustration: Anne Geßner Have you ever heard of energy vortices? Many people claim that such places exist on Earth and are considered to be magical places where people can not only capture the present energy, but also use it to empower their faculties, heal illnesses and open up to other realms of existence. One aspect of the energy vortices that I do not fully understand, or at least find very difficult to believe, is the concept of the polarity of energy that becomes manifest in such places.   In my opinion, those who claim the existence of these invisible energetic vortices, want to give it a scientific and physical appearance since there are different physical manifestations where energy divergence occurs. For instance, in the magnetism there is always a positiv and negative pole. Equally, such an energetic difference can been seen in the electricity.  In addition, there is another argument from the hermetic tradition which is the law of polarity contained in the book of the Ky

ROUSSEAU: REASON AS CALCULUS

  Illustration: Anne Geßner  As I was walking through the streets of a German city, I suddenly noticed a surprising scene: a woman in her forties was lying on the ground next to the entrance to an underground station. What caught my attention was that nobody bothered to help her. No one dared to look at her, it seemed as if everyone was in a hurry. Suddenly I heard voices whispering: "I am sure she is an alcoholic. I think she is a drug addict. If she is so, it's because she deserves it." Those who went for a walk or shopping tried to ignore her by looking at their mobile phones or the shop windows. The people who passed her gave themselves excuses to avoid feeling guilty. After seeing people ignore her and leave her to her fate, I understood Rousseau's words very well. I wondered when society and its citizens had forgotten that first instinct that had brought them to the highest point of evolution. Instead of listening to his natural inclination to help his fellow hu

THE NATURAL STATE OF THE HUMAN BEING ACCORDING TO ROSSEAU

Illustration: Anne Geßner     According to Rousseau, the human being is good, naive and close to nature. His universally developed body allows him a high degree of adaptability. Surely, human sensorial performance is not as highly specialized in habitats as it is the case with other animal species. However, it can cope with its environment and can therefore satisfy its basic needs. As soon as hunger and thirst have been satisfied, he rests. The human being is satisfied with it, without desire and free.  Rousseau's view of humanity is partly in contrast to the current conception of the human being, which says that humans, due to their cultural heritage and level of intelligence, are a special kind of animal that stands its ground against nature. He sees himself as the crowning glory of creation and at the same time separated from it. In this case, nature is seen as a reservoir of his desires. Of course, according to Rousseau, people do not have a perfect life in paradise. Nature can

EPICTETUS: POWER, AFFLICTION AND OPINION

Illustration: Anne Geßner  What is in our control?  Power is not only an expression of aggression or evil, but also of law, power and authority. According to Epictetus there are two types of power. The inner and outer form. The first means an ability of the human being to shape his life independently of other factors. This ability could today be called the own will. In contrast, external power is everything exoteric, i.e. things that people cannot control through their will. People can suppress their instincts, positively influence their opinions and attitudes. These human actions, as the German word "Handlung" indicates, show us that they are in our hands or in our power. However, other human products or developments are not in our power, such as a house, a reputation or even our own body. For example, the house is expropriated by the state, the doctor completely loses his reputation due to a mistake during surgery and a virus makes the person sick. All these events occur ou

EPICTETUS: DESTINY, LOGOS AND HAPPINESS

  Illustration: Anne Geßner     According to the stoic conception, the human being is capable, not only of recognizing the divine world order through reason, but also aligning their actions to it. For stoics, it is good to live in conformity with destiny or nature, through which the world order can be seen. Therefore, the wise man must learn  to control his emotions in a detached way, in order to face the inevitability of his destiny like illness and death. This approach has been used until today as a relevant moral ideal through many Western ethical theories and studies.    There are things in our power and others which we can not control. In our power are things like opinions, instincts and aversion, simply put: everything which is our own work. On the contrary, there are things beyond our power like our body, possesions, prestige and social position, basically: everything which is not our own work. What is in our authority to control, can be prevented by nature. Contrarily, what is

THE GOOD ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE: HAPPINESS AS THE HIGHEST GOOD

   Illustration by Anne Geßner    As always, in August it was very warm. The only place where you could tolerate the heat, was at the seaside. There, between the dunes I felt the breeze touching my skin gently while I could hear voices of children playing on the beach. For days, I kept my mind busy asking myself what makes life a good one. But I wasn't able to find a satisfactory answer, so  I dediced to enjoy the rest of the day doing nothing but having a refreshment at the seafront. Suddently, something caught my attention when I saw the children building sand castles. The way they were playing, made me understand in the blink of an eye, what at first true happiness means. I could see how absorbed they were, ignoring time and surroundings. Thoughts about school didn't come up at that time. Only the sand castles mattered to them. Aristotle suggests that happiness at first can mean different things. To sick people, happiness means health, for poor people, wealth, for a father w