2025 - An Older Man’s view of world's pain. . .

And a suggestion for improving the 10 Commandments

And yet everything used to be so wonderful! We were young—sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll—what a wonderfully uplifting drug abuse, rock concerts everywhere, hitchhiking undisturbed to southern Europe. And that youthful lust—when you’d dig your hands into the flesh of the girl you desired, the clothes would come tumbling off, you’d tear them from each other’s bodies, the moment would come, and you’d climax with ecstatic spasms.

But now, in the present. We’ve lived well and always eaten well. What’s the result? We’ve grown older, more corpulent, fatter. Erotic pursuits have fallen by the wayside. Men who go to prostitutes for gratification, and frustrated, quarrelsome women. The usual personal problems of people of a certain age!

And we have to cope with life in general:

Our society is caught in a conflict between reason and greed, and logical thinking has long since made it impossible to think positively about a rosy future. Senseless consumerism is at its peak. Parents buy their 12-year-old daughters all kinds of expensive face creams. And people travel just to take selfies and post them to their friends and acquaintances, so that they’ll admire them for their supposed affluence. Being able to treat oneself to travel and Nike shoes is seen as a sign of having risen to the upper class.

And climate change has long been undeniable, yet supermarkets are still filled with plastic bags and vast amounts of plastic packaging. The news—for example, on SPIEGEL.de—is increasingly frustrating: the southern beaches are overcrowded with sunburned tourists who behave badly; the new gastronomy scene believes it has achieved Michelin-star status simply by changing plates and cutlery with every course—what’s the point of that, exactly?

Add to that poverty and wars that defy all reason. Yet the politicians’ main intention ultimately seems to be their own enrichment. The progressive left has been fought by any means necessary and has practically disappeared. Only the rich still have class consciousness. Lowering production costs by exploiting the poor’s wages while raising prices. And thanks to artificial intelligence, the day has already come when we no longer know what to believe amid all these unpunished lies they feed us. And alongside cameras everywhere on the streets, there are more and more new laws and regulations. Yet every new law also creates informants—neighborhood watchers—who can report you for breaking them.

And social media—I just watched Adolecence! Everything now takes place solely on cell phone screens. On public transportation, you hardly see anyone without one in their hand. You even see tiny babies in strollers with a tablet right in front of their eyes. You’re constantly having to dodge people on the sidewalk who, with their eyes glued to their phones, are in danger of bumping into you. The moment they turn on their phones, they transport themselves out of the “real” world. In most taxis these days, you also have to buckle up, and tips are falling by the wayside because people are paying by credit card.

More and more young people are undergoing psychiatric treatment for mental disorders. Countless people idolize superstars like SHAKIRA or some electronic pop artist, or mindlessly waste their evenings watching idiotic cooking and jungle reality shows, and vote for far-right parties. I’ll get to religion later on. Morality and good taste have completely fallen by the wayside, and culture is in decline: everything that can be commercialized is commercialized. Everything is streamed now, while material goods are hoarded only by collectors and fetishists. No vinyl, no CDs, no DVDs—books are almost exclusively on Kindle. Everything is searchable on the internet. And whoever finds the wrong things ends up on the wrong path.

And the Americans have power over us—not just through Trump—but through all these global media outlets and platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, X, and Amazon.

All of this leads to ethical decay. We conceal, we envy, we steal, and—as soon as we have nothing left—we exploit the weakness of others; we lie and cheat!

Evil—Further Reflections on the State of Morality and Ethics

Every form of life is not only geared toward surviving as best as possible, but also toward optimizing itself in the process. That is the rule of evolution. And the core principle—“Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself!”—unfortunately does not apply, or no longer applies!

Animals have always preyed on other animals; organisms have always displaced other organisms. It is the natural order of things. But only humans, thanks to their superior intelligence, have taken this displacement to the extreme. Power, enrichment, greed, avarice, and manipulation at any cost—“the evolution of evil”! In a tiny fraction of the time that other living beings had to evolve, our pursuit of success has turned us into an untamable monster.

Yet each of us must admit that we have evil thoughts several times a day—envy, hatred, thoughts of murder, thoughts of greed, obsessive consumerism, etc. We buy or invest in things we don’t need! But at least some people keep themselves in check thanks to a good upbringing and internalized morality; they think evil thoughts but do very little that is truly evil or dishonest—such as using pirated computer programs or gaining advantages without causing excessive harm to others. Yet even the act of selling is questionable, because selling simply gives the seller an advantage.

That’s why we’ve had religion for ages. It catches believers in the act of having evil thoughts. For whoever believes in God also believes in guilt, tormented by the fear of God’s punishment, the fear of hell, and atonement. This is precisely what the Church has achieved, particularly with its Ten Commandments: keeping unsuspecting people under control through their fear of retribution. And in the process, it also makes a great deal of money, along with the pleasure derived from exercising power—not to mention sex with minors!

And unfortunately, it cannot be hidden that “we unbelievers—who are, however, rather honest and even endowed with greater intelligence”—are not steered onto a stable path by religion, but instead by careers, work, festivities, music, soccer, tennis, marathons, TV series, and TV shows.

Every crime movie, after all, confronts us with evil, which could ultimately have an educational value. But why is adultery still so demonized today? Why is sex still taboo? Belief in God is a form of autosuggestion practiced by misguided conspiracy theorists. Every believer constructs their own world. And even young soccer players cross themselves instead of just kissing their jerseys like others do! People used to believe in God or gods only because of circumstances they couldn’t explain. But nowadays, virtually everything is explainable, and gods should finally have become dispensable!

The best thing that could happen to us would be to transform the church into a less religious institution that is concerned solely with people’s morals and ethics. A good person should follow the laws and be helpful and generous.

And when it comes to people, only a good education can help. As far as I’m concerned, let them leave a little “God” in the universe—just for the uninformed!

My new 10 Commandments: